Where No Shadows Fall

by Peter Ritchie

  After thirty seconds, she picked up the gentle rhythm of almost inaudible snoring. Not the full-blown snorting of a strong young beast but the weak old lungs of a man with little left to give. There were voices, but she had nothing to worry about – it was football pundits talking shite for ridiculous money. Old Slab loved the game and all that came with it.

  She stood up, opened the French window wide enough to let her pass and pushed the curtains back so she could slip inside, pulling them behind her.

  The bedroom seemed stuffy despite the open windows, and the smells hit the back of her olfactory nerves. The room was spotless because Slab had always been almost obsessive about hygiene, even when he was torturing someone, and he’d always insisted everything was disinfected after he was finished. She picked up the smell of bleach, which she hated. It was mixed in with all those other chemicals that abound where someone struggles with the end of their life.

  Slab was propped up in the old recliner that had been his favourite chair since her mother had been alive. The bed was made up behind him, but he preferred his seat. The oxygen mask was on, and he looked peaceful enough for a man who should have had so much on his conscience. There was a tartan travelling blanket on his lap, and he was wearing a sweater with the sleeves pulled up to his elbows – another old habit that still hadn’t died.

  He’d been weak when she’d last seen him, but now there was even more evidence of decline. The forearms that had once been of Popeye proportions were thin, and his puffed blue veins stood out against the receding, almost yellow, muscles underneath. His hair was no more than wispy strands scattered around the dull skin on the top of his head, and the stubble across his chin and cheeks – which had caved in a long time ago – was rough and patchy. She looked almost in wonder at the man who had terrorised the city at one time, whose brute strength was legendary and who had even thought to punish a couple of assassins with a concrete slab.

  ‘Wish they could all see you now.’ She said it in no more than a whisper, but his eyes flickered for a moment as some deep instincts reacted to the subtle changes Brenda had brought into the room with her.

  As Lionel Messi scored another wonder goal on the TV she slipped off her shoes at the door and took the five steps that put her right over her father. There was no great rush and his eyes half-opened, although the lower edge of his eyelid could not lift completely to expose the eyeball. She smiled down at the man she hated so much and it felt good; for the first time in a while she felt a true rush of pleasure. Alone with her father, no witnesses and neither of them with anything to live for. It was a special moment, and she wanted to make sure they both experienced it to the full.

  ‘Daddy.’

  She’d never called him Daddy in her life, but it suited the occasion. In any case she liked the irony.

  There was a tiny spark behind the dull tone of Slab’s eyes. He was coming out of a deep sleep, and the pills made him groggy for a few minutes as his brain struggled with the messages trying to leap across damaged circuits. He made a sound: ‘Nnnngh,’ and it was somewhere between a word and a pitiful groan of recognition.

  ‘What’s that, Daddy?’ She got down on her knees and put her head on his lap as if she was a loving daughter trying to give peace to the man who’d helped make her.

  ‘Nnnngh.’ He lifted his hands off the rests and they trembled above her head before they settled back on the chair.

  Brenda lifted her head, stood up and leaned over with her lips to her father’s ear. ‘Remember what happened? I remember, Daddy.’ She leaned back and found he was sweating. Just the reaction she wanted to see and enjoy.

  Slab’s systems worked slowly now, but his mind had cleared and he was frightened. It hadn’t happened much as a young man, but he wasn’t young anymore. Brenda hadn’t come to hold his hand. She was torturing him, although not the way he used to torture people. This was different: slow and easy. No one to help him and he couldn’t fight back.

  There was another replay of Messi scoring yet another superb goal and the crowd roared in appreciation of the little genius.

  Brenda looked round at the screen. ‘He’s brilliant, that wee man. Wish he was fuckin’ Scottish . . . Daddy.’

  ‘Brenda . . . please.’ Slab got words out but it was an effort. Then he noticed the look in her eyes and saw the future.

  His daughter walked over to the bed and very carefully took one of the pillows, doing her best not to disturb the neatly made up order. She stood in front of him again and let him take in what was coming. ‘Now I’ll just slip off the mask for a minute.’ She was almost gentle as she did it. ‘There we are. Bye-bye, Daddy.’ She leaned forward again and whispered in his ear. ‘I wish there was a hell so you could fuckin’ burn.’

  It was pretty easy really. Slab’s terrified expression disappeared underneath the pillow she pushed over his face. She held it there firmly but not so hard as to cause bruising, and if he tried to struggle she barely felt a thing.

  When it was done she watched his face for a full minute, staring at the point in his neck that she’d seen pulsing earlier. Satisfied, she took the pillow back to the bed and carefully smoothed it down till it was impossible to tell it had been moved. When the oxygen mask was back on his face he looked quite normal for a dead gangster. No blade sticking out of his chest or half his face blown off with a shotgun, as was often the case when you played the game in Glasgow.

  ‘That’ll do nicely,’ she said into the room because her father certainly couldn’t hear her anymore.

  Brenda checked everything thoroughly, put her shoes on, slipped back through the doors and a few minutes later she was back in the car. She smoked another cigarette and stared at the house. She was glad that bit of business was done. There was a good stock of booze in her house and enough food to keep her going till they came for her. She decided she would try and get the Messi goals on Sky when she got home. They really were fucking beauties.

  49

  The same night that Slab McMartin died under his daughter’s hand, Macallan was struggling to relax given the ideas and images that were swimming round in her mind. She tried to read but couldn’t concentrate on the book for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

  Eventually she managed to sleep and drifted towards her fears. It was night-time, nothing but darkness, and she couldn’t distinguish a line between the sky and the land. She was standing by the river, which stood out in the blackness as if the light came from below, red and fierce. It was more like lava: viscous and treacherous. It flowed without a sound, and she recoiled because there were bodies in the hot mass, struggling to live, gasping in the torturous heat. They stretched out their hands to her, but she was frozen, unable to move her legs as she saw a man walk a few feet in front of her, look round and mouth a question, but there was no sound. Nothing.

  Macallan wanted to ask him what he wanted but nothing passed her lips. The man smiled, and as he lifted a small bundle up to shoulder height above the river his lips moved again. He waited for her answer then dropped the bundle into the churning river. She watched in horror as a small arm detached itself from the bloody rags before disappearing. She started calling for help over and over but no one could hear her.

  Macallan opened her eyes and reached for Jack, but there was only a cool place where he should have slept.

  The dream had passed, and when her eyes closed again, Macallan slept peacefully. She knew how to deal with the demons now: when they came she thought of Jack and the children.

  When she awoke the next morning Macallan pulled herself out of bed and couldn’t avoid thinking about the work she was doing, the wedding and trying to make sure Jack and the children didn’t come back to find her stressed up to the eyeballs. She was going to press hard on the Tommy McMartin case. The answers were close, and she had McGovern and Young, which could make the difference on getting answers. She owed Elaine Tenant for getting Young on loan – that had to have taken a deal of some kind. She marvelled again at how they’d progressed
from outright hostility to respect, and it seemed to be entirely due to the fact that they both had the ability to compromise.

  Macallan stuffed down some porridge and was on the road to Glasgow before the M8 clogged up like a chip-lover’s arteries, which it did most days. On arriving at Pitt Street, she found McGovern and Young both looking as if they’d been on the batter. She knew the eye bags came from a late night poring over what documents they had and probably annoying intelligence officers with requests.

  ‘You two look well – been ill lately?’ she asked. It was an old joke but they managed a joint tired smile.

  ‘What we do for God and Nicola is no one’s business.’ McGovern tried too hard to look like it had just been another long night for the detectives, but his voice wavered slightly, and although Young looked tired, he looked knackered. That was something different given McGovern’s health problems.

  Macallan wanted to say something but kept it shut till she’d worked out the right form for the words. She’d made a mistake, a bad one and cursed herself for forgetting what was really important. They’d barely got started on this case and already she’d let herself become absorbed in it, despite everything she’d discussed with Jack and everyone else who cared about her. One of them was McGovern, the man who had walked quietly at her side through the horrors and hardly ever complained unless it was to protect her. They’d obviously done an all-nighter, which was just par for the course in investigation, but he’d been pushed behind a desk because he’d suffered a heart attack. It had only been a mild one but that didn’t matter: Macallan knew better than anyone how important it was that what McGovern did was reasonable, and his doctor would not have approved an all-nighter. She told them they were going for breakfast on her and no arguments.

  ‘Felicity, I need to talk to Jimmy on his own about another job. Go splash some water on your face and catch you outside in five minutes.’

  Young picked up her bag and headed for the bathroom but had already worked out what Macallan was doing. She’d watched the dark marks spread like warning signs under McGovern’s eyes during the night and had even asked him a couple of times to call it a night but all in vain. He was old school, and an admission that he couldn’t last the pace would have been too much for him.

  When the door closed Macallan pulled a chair from behind the desk and sat directly opposite and close to McGovern, who looked surprised but only for a moment because, like Young, he knew what was coming. In investigation work partners have no secrets. They might try to conceal them, but there’s no space to hide from the other guy. They pick up all the non-verbals and the confessions that well up sometimes for no other reason than you’re locked up together in a small world where the only person you can trust is the man or woman trying to help you scrape the dirt away from some dreadful crime or secret. Half the time they’re the only person who really cares, and both sets of emotions and drives almost merge into one.

  Macallan leaned forward and forced him to look at her. She noticed the small blood vessels that had littered the whites of his eyes overnight, the loss of fresh colour that a night’s sleep would have given him. It was her fault, and she thought of his wife Sheena, and what he meant to her.

  ‘Question, Jimmy. Tell me, exactly how do you feel right now? No bullshit or I’ll get Felicity to bring Mick in to give you an old-fashioned CID interview.’

  McGovern was a proud man and had always detested DOs who complained of exhaustion, which wasn’t in the rule book when he’d first joined the department. Even though he realised he was wasting his time, for a brief moment he tried to act surprised. ‘Okay, I’m just a bit tired. A good night’s sleep and I’ll be raring to go. We’ve found something – you were right again.’ He almost looked like a schoolboy trying to cover some minor felony, dropping good news in to divert attention from the main problem.

  Macallan was the most loyal of people to her friends, but she had that tough edge that meant she could take the hard decisions when needed. She’d already made up her mind that she would not risk her friend and then have to explain to the family who adored him why he wasn’t coming home. ‘Now you promised me you’d say if there was a problem, even though both of us knew you wouldn’t. I could boot myself in the arse because I knew that and carried on, because I rely on you so much just to be there for me. I hardly questioned it when Elaine said you were available. That was selfish and stupid, but sometimes I’m like that. As Jack just told me recently.’

  She stood up and tried to look at a drab grey sky through the grime that had caked the window for years. It was the beginning of another day’s rain in Glasgow. ‘You’re going back to Fettes. You can work the intelligence there. I need answers quickly, and you can do that from there. They won’t give me another officer to work this, you know that. So this is the script: we go and have breakfast, you finish what you’re doing here and tomorrow you get to work in Fettes. There’s a lot to do on the HOLMES stuff. Felicity can work here and pass the intelligence requests to you. Okay?’

  ‘Don’t do this, Grace. I’m fine.’ McGovern hoped their friendship would buy him the time to finish the job and hold his head up. He knew Macallan was going to face some awful truths, and she would need someone at her side to uncover those secrets and deal with what they meant. He knew exactly the price she’d paid already, and she’d rebuilt her life, but she carried the memories like a virus that could reappear anytime.

  ‘No arguments, please. I said at the start that at the first sign of a problem we rein it back for you. I know this hurts, but I can’t risk you. There are too many people who care what happens. You were never Mick “I don’t give a shit” Harkins. Hurting your family’s not an option, is it?’

  She gripped his hand and he stared at the floor, trying to avoid the truth. She let the seconds flow by while he absorbed what she’d said. It was hard watching such a proud man accept his fallibility, and she could have wept for him, but she needed to do for him what he’d done so often for her.

  He took a deep breath and looked up at her. ‘Tell the truth, I’m glad. I just can’t do it anymore and thought I was going to keel over a couple of times last night. Christ, I used to work round the clock and come back for more. How does that happen?’ He grinned but there was no warmth in the expression. ‘I never saw the time passing.’

  His shoulders seemed to have dropped a couple of inches and he looked beaten. In a way Macallan felt almost relieved because she thought he might use anger to relieve the blow to his self-esteem. It happened, and sometimes men needed something or someone to blame rather than admit the truth.

  ‘It’s fine. There’s absolutely no shame in this, and I still really need you on my team. But please go home after we’ve had breakfast, kiss Sheena and the kids and get some sleep. Be at your desk tomorrow morning and, trust me, there’s plenty to do. Felicity probably has a pile of intelligence requests ready to go. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right, boss. Just be careful where you go with this. I’m not the only one carrying an injury. Am I right?’ He managed a smile that resembled the real thing.

  She put her arms round him. McGovern was right – they were both wounded, and more than they could ever admit.

  ‘What’s the plan today, then?’ He said it with just a trace of envy. It was there but Macallan accepted it.

  ‘I’m going to get to the heart of this. It’s close, I can feel it. I’m going to buy you guys breakfast and tell you about Jimmy Adams, and you’re going to tell me about what you’ve been doing all night.’

  They found a decent restaurant that did breakfast. Young didn’t need any explanation, and when Macallan said that McGovern would be doing the intelligence requests she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. She liked him a lot and was glad that he was being taken care of. Since she’d got involved with Mick Harkins she’d become even more aware what detectives were prepared to endure to get results, and it never ceased to amaze her. Indeed, it fascinated her, and in Mick’s case was one of the things she loved
about him, though he was certainly an advert on how not to behave in a responsible job.

  They found a table well away from the two office types who were engrossed in reading notes and probably dreading a day full of meetings. The detectives ordered everything with toast on the side, while Young went for muesli and a glass of water. Macallan was already attacking the second fried egg by the time she started to talk about what had happened with Jimmy Adams. She kept it brief but divulged enough for them to get the smell of what they might be looking at and to understand that he seemed like the genuine article.

  McGovern and Young had heard and seen their share of horrors in the past but the implication of what Adams had suggested was written all over their faces and they paled when she told them what had been said about Slab getting rid of a baby’s body. Like all investigators they could harden themselves to most things, but whenever a child was concerned they felt as sickened as anyone else. Every so often some new story would unfold and prove again that human beings were capable of almost anything. There were no borders, and the only saving grace was that the vast majority of people weren’t confronted with the atrocities unless they were unfortunate enough to be the victim or a witness themselves.

  ‘What in the name of God does that mean with the kid? Was Slab the father then?’ McGovern was no stranger to investigating incest cases and had done his share over the years.

  Macallan shrugged. ‘It takes us nowhere at the moment because Adams will close up if he gets an official visit or a request to stand as a witness. You know what these old-timers are like. This stays between us at the moment, but I’ll disclose to Elaine to see where we go with it. Let’s move on. Felicity, tell us what you’ve got so far.’

  Moving on after such a revelation was difficult but it was the only way to do the job.

  ‘Really interesting, and it may be something or nothing, but probably something if I was asked my opinion.’ That was how Felicity tended to answer questions. The listener needed patience to get to wherever she was taking them. ‘As I explained to you, the murder squad did request Mickey Dalton’s and Tommy McMartin’s phone records, because of course that would always be a priority job and would have stuck out if they hadn’t.’ She spooned a minute portion of muesli into her mouth and chewed while she flicked through a couple of notes.