by T F Muir
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
She took a moment to unfold herself, and sit on her butt. ‘Do I look it?’
‘You look better than I feel,’ he said, and hoped his smile would buck her up.
She hung her head, and said, ‘Fuck sake, Andy. I really thought I was going to die. I mean, I thought I’d never …’ She squeezed her lips, tried to hold herself together, but failed to stop her eyes from welling.
Gilchrist kneeled in front of her. With his hands cuffed behind his back, all he could do was press his head to the side of Jessie’s, and let her fall into him. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, as she let herself go, sobs wracking her body. ‘It’s OK, Jessie. We survived. Somehow. I don’t know how. But we did.’
She nodded, took a deep breath, then another. Her sobbing subsided, then she sniffed, and said, ‘Christ sake, my nose is running.’
‘It could be worse,’ he said. ‘It could be your mascara.’
She chuckled at that, then pulled herself back from him. ‘Sorry, Andy. I’ve messed up your jacket with blood and … and …’
‘Snot?’
‘Sorry.’
‘It could be worse,’ he said. ‘It could be—’
‘Don’t go there,’ she said, and chuckled and cried in equal measure.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can get out of here.’ He pushed himself to his feet, a bit awkward with cuffed hands, then walked to the desk on which the computer sat, an old desktop PC that had seen better days. Dust and greasy fingerprints marred the screen, and a glance along the electrical lead confirmed it had been snecked off and was plugless.
A brass handle on the desk drawer caught his attention, and he turned his back to it, gripped it with his fingers and managed to pull it out. It fell to the floor with a clatter of wood and metal, spilling its contents around his feet. At first glance, he saw nothing of use, but he scuffed the debris with his foot and uncovered a rusted blade for a Stanley knife.
‘Can you pick that up?’ he said.
‘You never make it easy.’ She shuffled on her backside, fingers scrabbling through the debris on the concrete floor.
‘A bit to your left,’ he said. ‘Nearly there. That’s it.’ Then he squatted on the floor, with his back to her.
It took some time for Jessie to saw through Gilchrist’s plasticuffs, managing to cut her fingers and Gilchrist’s wrists from her groping efforts. Then it was Gilchrist’s turn. With both hands free, it took less than five seconds to cut Jessie loose and pull her to her feet. They both looked at each other, as if surprised to find themselves still alive, relatively unharmed.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
Jessie slipped her hand inside her jacket. ‘They never took our mobiles.’
‘They never needed to.’
While Jessie called the Office for help, Gilchrist picked up the padded envelope by the computer. It felt light. Jock sends his regards. Well, he was sure it wasn’t a get-well card he had written. He tore it open and almost let out a shout of relief when his fingers wrapped around a small memory stick.
He slid the envelope inside his jacket and walked to the other side of the garage, to the corner where Fox had been killed. Blood and pieces of flesh and clothing splattered the back wall where Fox’s body had crashed against it. A mess of crushed cardboard boxes, twisted lever-arch files, scattered letters, discarded business mail – one sporting the address: Mrs J. Duncan, Wren’s Garage – covered the floor like the detritus from an overturned bin. Gilchrist leaned down and fingered his way through it, careful not to touch any gore.
It took him two minutes of picking and teasing his way through the mess before he found it in a discarded pile of computer leads and ethernet connectors, as if placed there for camouflage, intact and, incredibly, still working – Fox’s mobile phone.
CHAPTER 46
Three days later, Thursday, 11.45 a.m.
North Street Office, St Andrews
Gilchrist could do nothing to prevent a yawn from stretching his mouth.
His body ached, his head swam, and tiredness swept through him in numbing waves.
After being freed from Wren’s Garage, he and Jessie had refused to leave the scene for medical evaluation. Jessie claimed she’d had worse slaps from her mother, while Gilchrist downplayed his head wound. In the end, he’d worked through the night, and had less than ten hours sleep since. Other than a couple of Starbucks muffins and a pepperoni pizza delivered to the Office, he’d had next to nothing to eat, also. Even so, hunger eluded him. A piping-hot shower followed by a good night’s sleep in a bed warmed by his electric blanket seemed ten times more attractive than food.
But that would have to wait until later that night.
By the end of Monday evening, Wren’s Garage had been turned into a major crime scene. Teams of SOCOs had worked through the night and taken two full days to bag and log every item in the garage. Mid Shore for fifty yards either side of the pend had been closed to traffic, and had since become the local seaside attraction. Those residents closest to Wren’s Garage had been interrogated by teams of police and given statements. Even now, door-to-doors were still being carried out around town. All leave in the Anstruther and St Andrews Offices had been cancelled, and reinforcements from other Fife Divisions, as well as from Tayside, Lothian and Borders, and Strathclyde Police, had been seconded to the investigation.
It seemed to Gilchrist that wars had been fought with smaller armies.
A white van matching the description and registration number plate given by Gilchrist and Jessie had been found in the early hours of Tuesday morning, abandoned in a ditch at the side of a dirt track off the A916 north of Bonnybank. SOCOs from Tayside had been pulled in to examine the van and surrounding area, but had found nothing substantive. Cabin, seats, dashboard, handles, switches and steering wheel had all been wiped clean, and the back of the van hosed down. Although traces of heroin were found on the walls of the van, evidence of any bodies having been wrapped in plastic sheeting was not found; nor was the original driver – presumed killed, identity as yet unknown. Gilchrist had hoped that the plastic sheets might have leaked blood or body fluids, but it seemed as if they’d been sealed good and proper.
Tyre tracks in the grass verges gave credence to the theory that a vehicle swap had been made at night in the dark of the countryside, and that three vehicles – best guess – had been involved. But the make and models had yet to be identified. One smart young constable questioned where you would find a water supply in the countryside, which had the CCTV teams in Glenrothes checking footage of garage forecourts, looking for a van being hosed down. But again, they came up with nothing.
A gang of ghosts could have left a clearer trail.
But what set this gangland assassination to the forefront of other investigations was the fact that Strathclyde Police and Lothian and Borders Drug Squads had spent the previous four months in a series of joint undercover operations planned to culminate in a major drug-bust that night in a barn on the outskirts of Blackburn, twenty miles west of Edinburgh, and just about far enough from Glasgow to make it look as if it was beyond big Jock Shepherd’s reach. Known only to the necessary few, Operation Clean Out – aptly named in anticipation of doing just that to Scotland’s drug barons – had moved relentlessly onwards. But as the deadline approached, four of Shepherd’s men – Mann, Boyd, McBirn and Stooky Dee – had been murdered, which in an indirect way defined the beginning of the end of the drug bust.
Operation Clean Out was why Chief Constable McVicar had been instructed to assign Stooky Dee’s murder investigation to Strathclyde Police. With only days to go, the integrity of the operation could not be jeopardised by the involvement of other constabularies. With months of undercover work about to culminate in a massive sting operation, there was too much at stake to let a murder investigation of a mere mutilated body on a beached boat interfere in any way.
But despite that, Operation Clean Out backfired in spe
ctacular fashion.
It had been set to kick off at 7 p.m., the same time as the murderous attack in Wren’s Garage. With everything in place, Strathclyde’s BAD Squad – under the command of Chief Superintendent Victor Maxwell – stormed the barn, an outbuilding in a farm close to the town of Blackburn. Bodies thick with Kevlar vests, armed with semi-automatic machine guns and X26 Tasers, and backed by police marksmen with night-vision goggles and infra-red sights, Clean Out kicked off with a precision that could have been the envy of any Army commander.
The barn where the drug cache was allegedly stored had been lit up like a banshee’s party from helicopter searchlights. The door was battered down and teams of armed police, led by the BAD Squad, stormed inside, only to discover it was nothing more than a metal-framed structure for garaging farm vehicles – McCormick MC 115 Tractor with front loader; Bobcat 607 Backhoe; three flatback trailers – all later confirmed to be insured, licensed and roadworthy. Significantly, just enough traces of heroin were found in a corner of the barn to suggest that Operation Clean Out had been initiated a day too late.
In the face of an investigation into how such a carefully planned police operation had turned into a humiliating fiasco for several police forces, CS Victor Maxwell had tendered his resignation with immediate effect. Those who witnessed the moment reported that Maxwell had held his head high and his shoulders back as he left the scene.
But it had all been a ploy.
Maxwell had set up Operation Clean Out to fail, knowing that the drugs cache was not in Blackburn, but in Wren’s Garage. He had controlled the whole faked operation, keeping details close to his chest so that he would be the one person to take the blame, the full blame and nothing but the blame for its failure. Having done so, he would then resign, and in that way initiate what he had believed to be his fool-proof early exit from the police force.
But the memory stick delivered to Gilchrist by one of the hitmen – courtesy of Jock Shepherd – provided recordings of phone conversations between Maxwell and others in his team, as well as video recordings of clandestine meetings in pubs and open spaces, in which laundered drug money funding overseas property purchases was openly discussed. But Gilchrist hit the motherlode with seven videoclips showing Maxwell and key members of his BAD Squad discussing the imminent gangland-style executions of Cutter Boyd and Bruiser Mann. Separate phone recordings backed these up, with two more confirming the successful hit on Hatchet McBirn.
But one other video nailed it for Gilchrist: the deeply disturbing and horrific murder of Stooky Dee. Although CS Maxwell never appeared in the frame, his voice could be heard over Dee’s hysterical screams for mercy. Forensic analysis of that video would later confirm that it was Maxwell who had stuffed a folded five-pound note into Dee’s throat, and Maxwell who gave the instruction for Golden Plover to be set loose on the North Sea – to give the boys in blue something else to focus their resources on – a diversionary tactic to stretch police resources to the limit as the deadline for Operation Clean Out approached. With such clear and incriminating evidence it seemed a certainty that every member of Maxwell’s BAD Squad would end up in prison.
The powers that be did not hang around.
By two o’clock in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a warrant had been issued for CS Maxwell’s arrest. Strathclyde Police, with the assistance of Lothian and Borders, quickly mobilised to make the arrest at Maxwell’s home. Warrants were also issued for four other key members of his BAD Squad, and at 3 a.m. – only eight hours after the disastrous drug bust – five teams set off on concurrent missions to arrest and bring them all in.
The team assigned to Maxwell arrived at his home at 3.23 a.m. to find his wife, Alice, up and about, fully dressed, suitcases packed and in the hall, taxi parked outside ready to take them to Glasgow Airport for the early KLM flight to Amsterdam and onward connection to Thailand. When questioned, Alice explained that they were going on holiday. But when e-tickets were found to be for one way only, she broke down and confirmed they were leaving the British shores for good. It seemed that Maxwell and his wife had planned to retire to the Far East, and live out the rest of their lives in sun- and alcohol-soaked luxury.
Only problem was, Victor Maxwell was not at home.
According to Alice, Victor had returned from work at around 8.30 that night – CCTV footage would confirm his arrival at 8.42 p.m. – and had gone upstairs to shower and change. After that, they’d had a light meal, and just before midnight, Victor told her he was going to walk to the ATM machine outside the local Co-op and withdraw some more cash.
And that was the last she saw of him – so she said.
Gilchrist was having none of it. Dainty’s words as slippery as an eel in a barrel of oil reverberated through his mind. It was another ploy. He was sure of that. Why would someone as sly and untrustworthy as Maxwell take his wife of almost thirty years to Thailand, when he could fly there himself and live the life of a bachelor with an endless supply of beautiful Thai women to take care of his every need? So Gilchrist ordered uniformed units to look out for Maxwell, travelling under a fake ID, at Edinburgh and Glasgow airports. But by 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Maxwell had still not been sighted or picked up.
It seemed he’d managed to slip under the net again.
By midday Tuesday, a nationwide search for Maxwell was well underway, but had to be redirected at 3.50 that afternoon when a sharp-eyed detective in Strathclyde’s CCTV Unit, assigned to review early morning airport footage, noticed an incident in Glasgow Airport’s long-term car park. A morning mist hindered visibility at that time – 7.33 – but she was able to watch the driver of a white car – a Ford Fusion – being confronted by two men as he was removing a leather holdall from the boot. The man then seemed to walk willingly to a waiting Range Rover – sans holdall – and climb into the back seat, while the boot was closed and his Ford abandoned where it had been parked.
The Range Rover then exited the car park.
Two hours later, an investigation into the abandoned Ford Fusion confirmed it had been rented from Avis by a Mr Leslie Duncan, too coincidental a name to be anything other than a pseudonym for Victor Maxwell. They had found their man. The Ford Fusion was forensically examined, but all surfaces had been wiped clean, with no fingerprints found in the cabin, on the handles or on the boot. The abandoned holdall – address label L. Duncan with nothing else – at least provided clothes from which DNA samples could be taken.
Despite having the Range Rover’s registration number, no record of it could be found on either the DVLA database, the PNC or the ANPR system. A team was assigned to try to locate it on other CCTV cameras around the airport, but had no luck, the general consensus being that the plate was false and had since been changed. Without a definitive number plate to pin it down, the CCTV team soon found themselves tracking seven similar-looking Range Rovers through Glasgow’s rush-hour traffic.
Gilchrist suggested they focus on any Range Rovers heading to the south of Glasgow, specifically to the Pollokshields area, where Shepherd lived. But even that turned up nothing. It seemed that the Range Rover had simply vanished, with Maxwell in it.
With the finger of mounting suspicion pointing at Shepherd for being responsible for Maxwell’s disappearance, Strathclyde Police obtained warrants to search his homes – his main residence in Pollokshields and a luxury eight-bedroom villa in Murcia, Spain. Despite his poor health, Shepherd had been hauled into Govan Police Office again for questioning under caution, but been released. Gilchrist could not shift the image of Shepherd showing him photographs of four mutilated bodies, men on his payroll, and the memory of the anger that lifted off the man like heat from rock. Shepherd’s team of lawyers might have bought him enough time to enjoy what was left of his life in his own home, but Gilchrist was convinced it was only a matter of time before he was found to be behind the murderous raid on Wren’s Garage, and Maxwell’s disappearance. Even though Shepherd had weeks, maybe only days to live, he was hell-bent on taking revenge on the man
responsible for killing his men – Victor Maxwell. Of course, the boost to Shepherd’s enterprises from the millions of pounds in drug money grabbed from Wren’s Garage could be seen as the icing on top of the cake celebrating Maxwell’s demise.
But one person who never featured in any of these videos or phone recordings was DS Fox. Without his mobile phone being recovered from Wren’s Garage, he might never have existed. Forensic teams confirmed that Maxwell’s phone – which he’d had to keep powered up during Operation Clean Out – had taken a call from Fox at 6.58 p.m. Fox’s voice message had been subsequently deleted, but Jessie and Gilchrist were able to confirm Fox’s panicked call from Wren’s Garage, just before the arrival of the van at 7 p.m.
Four other members of Maxwell’s BAD Squad – identified from the memory stick files – had been arrested and charged. Another seven were being questioned under caution. CI Jeffrey Randall, who had once interrogated Gilchrist over his alleged removal of critical evidence from an ongoing investigation, now headed up Complaints and Discipline, and with Maxwell’s proven link to Wren’s Garage, Gilchrist had pressed for an answer to how Lesley Jennifer Wren Duncan fitted into the equation. But Randall couldn’t help. No one in the BAD Squad could provide any answers. Even Jackie – best researcher in the world – struggled to find anything conclusive on Duncan’s name.
But by Wednesday evening, she’d provided Gilchrist with a number of possibilities.
Maxwell’s wife had lost a child at birth, a girl they’d named Jennifer. Maxwell’s grandfather, Duncan Maxwell, had a sister called Lesley. Not enough for definite proof, but sufficient to convince Gilchrist that the name had been devised by the man to create a false identity, a non-existent person who could fill the role of company secretary for Maxwell’s benefit. After all, the fictional Lesley J. W. Duncan had access to a number of bank accounts through which millions of pounds passed annually. Slippery as an eel in a barrel of oil might not be considered close enough. By comparing the bank accounts noted in Christie’s logbook with those noted in Tommy Janes’s notebook, Gilchrist was able to confirm that transposing the first two numbers with the third and fourth number of each account had been the simplest of cryptographic keys. The FIU obtained warrants to freeze every one of these bank accounts, and had already set in motion legal action to secure all funds on the basis that they had been obtained through the illegal sale of drugs.