‘That’s excellent, Grace, and I was going to call you. There’s someone else who’ll sit in on the meet, and we can do it today if you’re on your way back?’
How things change – Tenant seemed genuinely pleased to hear from her. The reference to ‘someone else’ in the meet was intriguing, but it was the nature of what she was doing. It was apparent that some other box was about to be opened in Fettes, but she explained that Jack was on his way back and so they agreed to make it the following morning.
She was passing Harthill services when McGovern called and told her they needed to meet as soon as she was back.
‘See you before I sit down in the morning with the Chief Super if that’s okay?’
‘Perfect, and Felicity will be there as well. Can’t speak on the blower.’
After she’d hung up, Macallan put on some music – she needed something to soothe her strained nerves. She put on a Roberta Flack CD and the beautiful voice that belonged in heaven did its thing as she drove the car on autopilot, shutting off the problems she faced. The singer had always been Macallan’s favourite musical treatment when things got tough.
As she glanced at the edges of Livingston slipping by on her left, the phone rang again and she saw the number but no name came up on the screen with it. She usually gave it a miss if that happened, but it was the third time she’d seen that number in a couple of days. The temptation was too much this time so she took the call, expecting some poor soul in a call centre trying to sell her something she didn’t need. She said hello a couple of times and turned up the volume. Someone was on the other end of the line, and she wondered whether it was some perv hoping for a quick thrill.
‘You called the wrong police officer, my friend. Now go and play somewhere else before I take a day off and come and get you.’
She realised she wasn’t concentrating on the road and snapped, ‘Look, you’re wasting your time trying to frighten me. Now piss off.’
‘It’s okay, Grace.’
The line clicked off and she stared at the screen, which told her nothing. She had to hit the brakes to avoid ramming the back end of an old lady crawling along the inside lane. ‘Jesus Christ!’
Some bastard had her number and was playing a game. She ran her fingers through her hair and saw she was trembling. The caller had spoken in no more than a whisper but there was still something familiar about his voice. The problem was that detectives spent their lives meeting people who they dealt with then never saw again. Witnesses, villains, lawyers and just about every section of society. There would be a thousand voices leaving traces in her circuits.
Steady, Grace – it’s probably nothing, she thought, although she didn’t believe it and wished Jack was there. She ached for him and the children but reassured herself they’d soon be home with her.
Shortly after, Jack called to say they were just past Ayr, which meant they’d be home in a couple of hours. When she heard the dog barking in the background as if he was delivering his own message, it made her grin and briefly forget the previous phone call. She decided to nip into the Waitrose next door to Fettes and grab something nice for dinner that wouldn’t take too much effort.
51
It felt like home again with the noise of the two little ones and the general chaos that a young family and a dog can create after time away from base camp. Macallan was almost overwhelmed by it; she kept closing her eyes and making sure that it was no dream. This family was all hers and they were happy together. It still didn’t seem possible: Macallan happy with life.
When they’d eaten they decided to head for Inverleith Park before the children had to go to bed, and they let the dog run mad because there was always a good selection of hounds there criss-crossing the green fields. Jack knew Macallan was under stress, and he struggled to keep to their deal that her work shouldn’t come home. He did the lawyer’s thing and decided that as they were in the park, it couldn’t qualify as the marital home. ‘Talk to me. Something’s up.’
‘Thought we weren’t allowed. That was the deal.’
He explained his legal interpretation, which made her smile. How on earth would she cope without Jack Fraser?
‘It’s a strange case, and in a way shouldn’t bother me, but you know what I’m like.’ She left out almost all of the details but did tell him about the anonymous call.
Jack looked round at her but didn’t speak for a minute as they trudged slowly past the pond. They took a seat and pulled the children in close. He was just glad the kids couldn’t begin to understand what their mother had to deal with. The dog had almost run its short legs off and jumped up beside them to complete the team. ‘Don’t know what to think about that. What do you think?’
‘Difficult to tell. The world is full of people with nothing to do but hate themselves so they turn it somewhere else. You know what it’s like – lawyers sometimes have the same problem. It’s hard to separate all this stuff out.’ She patted his arm and decided it was time to lighten the conversation. ‘Anyway, I’ll have this one closed off soon. It won’t drag on, and God knows what we’ll get at the end of it because they all seem to be dead or likely to die.’
Jack wished that was true, but he was surprised to find he wasn’t frustrated at her struggling with another problem that would cost her. He admired that she could wade in and face her demons again. The difference now was that they were a strong family and all she needed these days was to come home, put her arms round him and then everything was okay again – she could deal with the consequences. In the past, she’d struggled with her problems alone.
Jack knew that eventually she would move on to some new challenge. He had the feeling that she just needed this case to prove she could still do it. Their life was moving on regardless, and he just had to help steer her on that course.
‘Right, let’s go home, you cook your man a nice steak and once the kids are bye-byes I’ll let you chase me round the settee.’
She snorted a laugh and gave him one of those rare smiles that could light up her face and eyes. ‘Okay, big boy, and I’ll even give you a start.’
They headed home as the man watched them from across the pond.
52
He’d watched them from the time they’d left the house, following them as they wandered through the park and talked beside the pond. They seemed totally engaged with each other as they headed back home through Stockbridge, stopping occasionally and peering into shop windows as they talked and tried to restrain the dog heaving against his lead.
When he’d first met Macallan he could see she was so like him, involved with other people’s lives but utterly alone. It was something that had almost reassured him, seeing others like him who wandered among the population like little islands. He’d always believed they were closer to each other than people like Macallan would ever like to admit.
It chewed that since he’d been away from the city somehow or other she’d changed lives. That wasn’t supposed to happen, and the raw truth was that he would have been incapable of making the same change. It made him shake with rage that she could be a different person from the one he was sure could have wanted him in another life.
As he watched her look up at the big man at her side and brush something off his shoulder, it occurred to him that no woman had ever made such a small personal gesture with him, because he would have hated that level of intimacy. He remembered the way his wife and children used to look at him, could still almost feel the cold empty atmosphere in his own home that at one time had the same composition as Grace Macallan’s family: two adults, a girl and a boy. The difference was that they had all detested each other.
He felt something like a vice grip his abdomen so hard he doubled over and groaned. Sweat poured out over his body, which felt sticky and cold even in the warm sunshine that bathed the streets. An old man put his hand on his shoulder and asked him if he was alright. He detested being touched by another human being and sprang back up, shoving his face close to the startled man, who t
ook half a step back at what he saw in the stranger’s eyes.
‘Fuck off and keep your filthy hands off me!’ He grabbed the old man by the jacket collar and pushed him away. The few walkers who saw the little incident shook their heads but decided not to get involved. The would-be Samaritan walked off in the other direction and felt ashamed that his physical strength had disappeared with his youth.
He was heaving in air and scanned the street for Macallan. He saw her with her little family further along the pavement, but they were moving slowly, as if they had all the time in the world.
He forced his emotions under control and moved along the street, taking the opposite side from her but guessing correctly that they were heading back home.
When they closed the door behind them he felt lonely. It was as if Macallan and her family were all he had left. This was his last mission in life, and when he tried to think of another purpose for his existence there was nothing but a vast empty space in his mind.
He pulled out his hip flask and swigged a couple of gulps of raw vodka. There was no pleasure in drinking now – it burned its way into his gut and would kick off the chronic acid indigestion that plagued him every time he put alcohol to his lips. Drink had been all that had kept him from walking into the sea in the previous months, but now it was a trial of strength to force it down his throat and struggle with the consequences.
He headed back to the cheap and nasty little B&B he was staying at to rest up for a few hours and let the indigestion tablets settle his stomach. There wasn’t much more he needed to discover about Macallan, although there was still a mild thrill in watching her and her family when they had no idea that he was there, and at the thought that he’d been in their home, relaxed and studied their intimate spaces. He’d stared at the bed and imagined. He still had power and would use it to make his statement.
Her voice had thrilled him – the little edge of nerves he’d heard when she’d told him to piss off. He was enjoying it now and there was no way she could get to him through the phone. That would have been just too basic a mistake for a man with his experience. He had made the calls from call boxes, even though the experience of standing in those filthy coffins that doubled as public conveniences made him feel sick. He despised people, and particularly the ones at the bottom of the social ladder.
53
When Macallan walked back into Fettes the next morning, she still hadn’t shaken off her reaction to the anonymous caller. She wanted to put it away, because getting her number was no problem for anyone who wanted to wind her up for some past grievance. The world was full of people who wanted to pay back a cop or the whole service – that just went with the territory – but she couldn’t help tying everything in with the McMartin case. She knew she might be making too much of it and debated whether she should take it further. McGovern would keep it quiet though, so she decided to get him to track down the phone and see what it told them, if anything.
McGovern was waiting for her, though Young was delayed by about ten minutes. Macallan was relieved to see that he looked so much better than he had in Glasgow. The colour was back in his cheeks, and the lines of stress around his eyes had softened back. He was relaxed and seemed happy to see her. She took the chance to tell him about the call and said she hoped she wasn’t making a fuss about nothing.
‘Don’t be daft. There’s a lot of people out there with no reason to love you, and you never know when one of our dissatisfied customers are going to make a nuisance of themselves. I’ll get it checked but take it you don’t want it to go anywhere at the moment?’
‘Exactly. If you need anything authorised then I’ll speak to Elaine as well, but it goes no further. It’s this case, I’m beginning to see bogeymen everywhere.’
Young came in and they settled down with some coffee. McGovern looked like he was struggling to hold on, clearly itching to tell her a story.
Macallan gave them a quick briefing on her visit to Slab’s house and what she’d seen there. On the grounds that there was little or no evidence, she left out her instinct that someone could have entered the house and killed him. She knew that McGovern and Young were already worrying that she was running off-script and she didn’t want to make that situation any worse. There would be a PM, and if there was something suspicious maybe it would turn up there.
‘Okay guys,’ Macallan said, ‘tell me what you’ve got because I can’t help feeling we have a story here, though God knows if we can get anyone in court at the end of the day.’
She sat back and let McGovern take over.
‘The thing is that this might just be another piece that doesn’t solve anything, but I have to put my hands up and say that at the very least I’m getting the same stink in my nostrils that you have.’
Macallan had been feeling slightly out on a limb about what they were struggling with so the news that McGovern was on board made a difference to her. ‘We did more of the phone work and blended the phone records Danny Goldstein gave us with the incomplete ones we recovered from the murder squad system on HOLMES. There’s an interesting pattern, and Felicity has done another full night on this on top of her day job.’
Macallan looked at the analyst, who was tired but clearly pleased with herself. ‘Big thanks. I owe you and that man of yours a meal at the end of this.’
‘I worked overnight so I could keep on top of my other work. Thought it would keep my bosses off our backs. If they saw my other stuff piling up there might be a problem . . . but then you know that.’
Macallan nodded and looked at McGovern again.
‘I’ve run the subscribers through the system and, put it this way, there’s a few VIPs through here who were obviously enjoying Mickey’s professional skills. Of course that does nothing for us. Felicity mentioned one number in particular though, and this seemed to be a regular pattern.’ McGovern looked to Young. ‘If you’d like to explain this and then I’ll do the intel next.’
‘I could see straightaway that there was a regular pattern with this one number.’ Young took off her glasses and cleaned them as she spoke. ‘Obviously for someone in his game there was a lot of traffic on the phone, including Tommy McMartin, but this number I’m describing sticks out because of the absolutely regular pattern almost up to the month before the murder. I think there’s a good chance that it was a regular punter and looks like they had an appointment nearly every Thursday night. In the month before the murder there are calls at all times of the day and night. Initially the calls would last for some time, but as it went on a lot of the calls would be cut off after a few seconds, and in this type of analysis it could well indicate problems between the callers – phone getting put down and that kind of thing. Jimmy can fill in the intel now.’
Macallan felt a mild rush because she could see that they were about to give her something that could be really useful, and she wanted them to lay it on the table. It was important for her to have a grasp of the detail before she saw Elaine Tenant, so she would be trying to sell her something that made sense instead of the gut feelings she was playing with.
McGovern looked at a sheet of prompts again before he spoke. ‘I got this subscriber’s details, and at first glance he’s interesting but no more than the VIPs on this side of the country. Anyway, his name is Ian Moore and he was a senior figure in the planning department in Glasgow. Might have been nothing on its own, but there was substantial intel that Slab had a large property portfolio and seemed to be ahead of the game every time there was a new development somewhere.’
McGovern picked up a glass of water and checked his notes again. ‘I got subscriber’s details for Moore’s phone, and this is where it gets interesting. First of all, when he was making regular calls to Mickey he would invariably call a nice four-star hotel near what was his office at the time. It’s a reasonable guess that this hotel was where they’d meet. We can tie that one down if you need it. Okay so far?’
Macallan nodded and pulled out her notepad as McGovern continued.
&nbs
p; ‘When we look at Moore’s call traffic then the picture clears. He makes occasional calls and receives occasional calls from a number that at the time was just down as pay as you go. Get this though: about a year later intel came in that the phone was used by one of the McMartin team, and in fact the intel was that it was the safe phone used by Slab himself. There’s an increase in traffic between this phone and Moore in the couple of weeks before the murder.’
McGovern paused to check his notes again. ‘We also know that the phone called the CID office on the night of the murder. In other words, this was probably the anonymous call reporting the disturbance at Mickey’s flat.’
McGovern sat back. He was tired again, and Macallan saw it even though her friend was trying his best to hide the sudden change.
‘That phone being Slab’s ties in exactly with what Jimmy Adams told me. Where’s Moore now?’ Macallan asked.
‘We don’t know yet because he retired on ill health and we’re still trying to find out what that was about.’
McGovern watched Macallan work the information and the possibilities.
‘Charlie MacKay’s dirty; has to be. But I wonder if we can get our hands on him. What do you think, Felicity?’
‘Given what happened, my hypothesis is that a problem of some kind developed between Moore and Mickey Dalton. Moore had some relationship with Slab, and we have the intel that they were heavily involved in property development. We know the call is made on the night of the murder from a phone that at least is used by the McMartins if not by Slab himself. We can be sure of all this. Where it goes depends on what we do now. There are lines of investigation, but will we be able to follow them up?’
‘I’ll go and have this meet with the Chief Super and get back to you.’
Macallan walked slowly to Tenant’s office and spun the options. The clues were there, but could she get to the answer before the players who were still alive were beyond her reach?
Where No Shadows Fall Page 27