A note on the author
Douglas Skelton was born in Glasgow. He has been a bank clerk, tax officer, taxi driver (for two days), wine waiter (for two hours), journalist and investigator. He has written several true crime and Scottish criminal history books but now concentrates on fiction. His novels Open Wounds (2016) and Thunder Bay (2019) were longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize. Douglas has investigated real-life crime for Glasgow solicitors and was involved in a long-running campaign to right the famous Ice Cream Wars miscarriage of justice.
Also by Douglas Skelton
Non-fiction
Blood on the Thistle
Frightener (with Lisa Brownlie)
No Final Solution
A Time to Kill
Devil’s Gallop
Deadlier than the Male
Bloody Valentine
Indian Peter
Scotland’s Most Wanted
Dark Heart
Glasgow’s Black Heart
Amazing and Extraordinary Scotland
Fiction
Blood City
Crow Bait
Devil’s Knock
Open Wounds
The Dead Don’t Boogie
Tag – You’re Dead
The Janus Run
Thunder Bay
THE BLOOD IS STILL
A REBECCA CONNOLLY THRILLER
Douglas Skelton
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.
Birlinn Ltd
West Newington House
10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.polygonbooks.co.uk
1
Copyright © Douglas Skelton 2020
The right of Douglas Skelton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978 1 84697 530 1
eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 258 6
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.
Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh
‘There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still’
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
1
He lies on his back, arms outstretched, his legs apart, his eyes open, watching the soft snow float towards him. He knows he is dying but he can do nothing about it – not pinned down the way he is. There is no pain, merely a numbness that he knows is not wholly caused by the damp heather beneath him. It is as if he has been given a local anaesthetic that has desensitised his body but left his mind active. It creeps through him, stealing all feeling, all mobility, all life.
His blood, though, he can still feel. Or at least he thinks he senses it bubbling from the wound. If he could move his head, he might be able to look down and see it oozing freely around the cold steel, soaking through his clothes . . .
No, not his clothes, these are not his clothes.
. . . and seeping through to the earth below. This earth is no stranger to blood. It is steeped in it. It may have been spilled 275 years before but the blood remains, mixing with the roots of the heather, settling between the rocks and the pebbles and the grit to rest in the muck below; sinking, perhaps, to the very centre of the earth.
A faint mist drifts through the darkness but he does not feel its icy caress. He thinks he sees shapes in the swirl: nebulous, without form or flesh, but there all the same. Men, long dead, yet still tied to the blood-saturated ground they no longer feel beneath their feet. He senses them clustering around him like pallbearers, studying him, studying the clothes . . .
No, not his clothes.
They are at once so familiar and yet so very alien. On some level he understands their confusion, for he is dressed as they but he is not of them. His garb is of more recent manufacture, carefully contrived to look homespun. And yet, despite this, he knows these ethereal figures are ready to welcome him to whatever world of vapour and shadow they now call their own.
He hears – thinks he hears – sounds.
Muffled. Faint. Flat.
The clank of metal on metal. A stutter of gunfire.
Groans. Harsh cries of anger and agony. Screams as iron rips flesh.
Tears.
Men weeping as they die or as their brothers die. Highland voices keening as their comrades’ lives slip into the dank air. Tough men, for whom life had been hard, now reduced to sobs over the futility of it all. He wants to weep with them and for them but he has no tears. He has no time. He has nothing.
He has not been a good man. He had not known it then – it had never occurred to him – but he knows it now, as he lies on the cold earth waiting for a death he can do nothing to prevent. He has accepted it and has made his peace. He might as well try to stop every snowflake from hitting the ground. But no, he has not been a good man. He has not been evil, though he has known evil men, but he has not lived his life well. He wonders if somehow he deserves this.
The numbness has stolen just about everything from him. The shapes tighten around him, waiting, for they also know his time of flesh and bone is nearing its end. He too must become a creature of mist and memory. They will help him, he knows that. They are strangers, separated by time and mortality, but they are brothers in death. The sounds of battle fade. He watches the snowflakes as they drift gracefully from the dark skies to settle on his upturned face, a slight breeze catching them and sending them into a soft spin – slow-motion ballerinas swirling to music no one can hear. Finally, inevitably, he lets the cold take him until he becomes one with it.
His blood is still.
2
As demonstrations went, it was unlikely to rival des gilet jaunes. In fact, there was only one hi-vis yellow jacket in view, perhaps worn by someone who had been watching CNN and been inspired by the Paris movement. Or perhaps it was merely a workie who had stopped by to find out what the fuss was all about.
The supporters bulged around the small woman as she stood beneath the sign that detailed parking restrictions outside the red-brick building. Too many for a knot of people, not enough for a throng, Rebecca Connolly thought. Some of them leaned on the half-dozen blue bollards that surrounded a ‘no parking’ area marked by yellow crosses on the tarmac. She saw a handful of hand-made signs – cardboard stapled or glued to sticks or broom handles, words scribbled in marker pen expressing their reason for gathering here on this nippy, dull March morning. There had been a light fall of snow overnight but it had not rested on the city streets. A few people stood on the opposite side of the narrow road, watching and listening, but they were merely passers-by, lingering to find out what was going on. Rebecca saw a man in the upper window of the guest house behind them, a saucer in one hand, cup to his lips, the events outside the council headquarters proving more interesting than Homes Under the Hammer.
Rebecca watched Mo Burke work the crowd and could not help but be impressed. In another life, another world, she could have been a politician, or at least a community leader. The people listening to her knew what she really was, but still they paid attention, they applauded, they nodded their heads in assent. Perhaps they did so only because they had been urged to come along by Mo and her sons, for when a Burke urges, it is best to fall in line. Perhaps it was merely because she was telling them what they wanted to hear, giving voice to their
own thoughts, strengthening the words with a powerful delivery only partly aided by the microphone and megaphone. The thing was, she didn’t really need it – her voice was strong enough to carry her words. She was not a large woman, but she had a presence. Star quality. If star quality was packaged in bleached blonde hair and a smoke-roughened Glasgow accent. Many years of living in the Highlands had done little to soften its edges.
Chaz Wymark was down at the front, grabbing shots of Mo as she spoke. She had given him a few suspicious looks; she did not generally welcome press interest, but she had opened this particular door, for some reason, and had to accept it. Rebecca had snatched some shots of the crowd with her phone for the Chronicle, her newspaper budget no longer stretching to the hire of freelance photographers such as Chaz. She was no snapper so they would have to take what they got, not that they cared much any more. But she did make sure Mo was in the frame.
Mo Burke, given name Maureen, sometimes known as Ma, was a drug dealer, if only by repute, for the truth was she had never seen the inside of a court room on charges relating to supply, at least not from the point of view of the dock. Rebecca had done her homework before heading out to cover the demo, so she knew the woman’s husband, Tony, was a different matter. He was currently doing time for assault to severe injury after having a close encounter of the hurt kind with an Edinburghbased thug called Sammy Lang, who was trying to horn in on the Inverness market. Sammy was known as the Slug because he left a trail as he walked. He also, Rebecca was told, had a liking for underage sex.
Given the Slug’s sexual predilections, Rebecca wondered if it was a coincidence that Mo Burke had chosen to champion this particular cause. A rumour had gathered strength in the city’s Inchferry area that the council planned to rehome a convicted sex offender there in a vacant flat. Predictably, officials refused to either confirm or deny the story and, just as predictably, that was instantly taken as confirmation. It was Mo Burke who had taken it upon herself to organise the demo outside the Highland Council’s complex in Inverness’s Glenurquhart Road. Rebecca saw Mo’s two sons among the crowd that had rallied round her flag, which was actually a sign behind her that said ‘WE ARE NOT A DUMPING GROUND’. That was a far more preferable war cry to the crude placard being held aloft that read ‘NO PERVURTS HEAR’.
Some of the supporters had wandered away from the main body to linger on the vehicle entranceway, where they were advised to return to the pavement by one of the three police officers on duty. Rebecca was surprised there were so few, the Burke family reputation being what it was. She kept her distance on the opposite side of the entranceway, where she leaned on the sign embedded in the grass that carried the council logo and stated that this was the Prìomh Oifis – the headquarters. She wondered how many of those attending had the Gaelic, or cared that nearly every official sign was bilingual. Not many, she suspected.
‘They think we are stupid.’ Mo was talking into the microphone, her free hand jerking the hand-held loudspeaker in the general direction of the building. ‘They think we don’t know what they’re up to. But we know. WE KNOW!’
This was met with more nodding heads and a few grumbled ‘ayes’ and ‘naws’ and a ‘You’re right, Mo.’ She seemed satisfied with the response but she still hammered her point home.
‘WE ARE NOT A DUMPING GROUND,’ she shouted, the shriek of protest from the speaker forcing her to modulate her tone. ‘We’re here to let them know that we’re not some sort of dustbin for all the perverts in the Highlands. We’re no having it. We’re no having them rehousing even one of them in our streets. Right?’
The supporters responded with ‘No way’, ‘Bloody right’, ‘You tell ’em, Mo’, along with an assortment of grunts and more nodding heads.
‘We elect they folk in there, and not just to plunk their backsides behind a conference table and claim all kind of expenses. They’re there to represent us, to do what we want. Right?’
More agreement from the crowd.
‘And what do we want?’
‘Perverts out!’ someone shouted. Rebecca thought it was Nolan Burke, Mo’s eldest son. She spotted him in the middle of the protesters, handsome in a ‘Ben Affleck in his prime’ way, his black hair perfectly groomed, his skin tanned, whether from a recent visit to sunnier shores or a sunbed she couldn’t say. She had seen him before, although not face to face. He was a regular attendee at the sheriff court on what were generally minor charges – breaches, small acts of violence – although there were whispers he was capable of more serious offences. Appearances by both him and his younger brother Scott were numerous enough for one of her colleagues to resurrect and amend an old joke: What do you call a Burke boy in a suit? The accused.
Nolan wasn’t wearing a suit today, though. He was encased in a heavy sheepskin flight jacket, which made her wonder where he’d parked his Sopwith Camel. He caught her staring at him and she looked away again sharply, searching for his brother’s familiar head of blond hair. Scott would be around somewhere, she knew. He was a tall lad, though took after the mother in terms of colouring; Nolan was more like the father.
She spotted Scott wandering the fringes of the crowd, a strange little smile on his face, his hands thrust in the pockets of his lightweight camouflage jacket – what was it with the Burke brothers and their military clothing? The cold obviously did not trouble him. He was Scott Burke, after all, a tough guy. He was slightly slimmer than his older brother but there was muscle there. His features were weaker and not as attractive, while that smile twitching on his lips just came across as nasty.
Rebecca had the sensation of being watched and, despite her best efforts, flicked her gaze in Nolan’s direction again. Yes, he was still looking at her, eyes narrowed slightly, as if trying to place her, even though he would have seen her in court. When he caught her look returning to him, he nodded and smiled. It wasn’t a discomforting smile, not like his brother’s, but he was still Nolan Burke.
She returned her attention to his mother just as Mo nodded in her son’s general direction. ‘Aye – that’s right. Perverts out. Keep our streets safe. Keep our kids safe. No pervs in our scheme. Perverts out! Perverts out! PERVERTS OUT!’
The crowd’s response was far from ecstatic. A few stalwarts picked up the chant and, like Mo, began to pump their fists in the air. Scott Burke gave one recalcitrant youth a nudge and a nod to urge him to join in. The young man did as he was told, it being less harmful to his health.
What chanting there was began to stutter and still as people turned to look at a tall man emerging from a taxi. His tanned face was younger than his thick white hair might suggest, and he was wearing a pinstripe blue suit, a blue shirt, with pale yellow tie and matching handkerchief carefully composed at his breast pocket. Another two men joined him on the street – large men, thick-set men, who bore the frozen-faced expressions of large, thick-set men who could do, would do and quite possibly had done damage to those who were less large and thick-set than they, and who had the temerity to approach and even molest their employer. They could not have been more obvious if they had worn T-shirts saying ‘We’re his bodyguards, so don’t mess’. The crowd parted to allow the three men to pass among them. Rebecca didn’t need to hear the whispers to know who the smartly dressed man was. She had seen him talk on TV, had even been present at a press conference held to announce his candidacy to stand as an MSP.
Finbar Dalgliesh. Well, well. He was the lawyer who had spearheaded Spioraid nan Gàidheal – Spirit of the Gael – or Spioraid for short, a new ultra-right-wing political movement that believed Scotland would be better on its own. Where it radically diverged from the mainstream nationalist cause was its message that Scotland would be even better with only white, home-grown Scots. No foreigners, no gays, even women were suspect. They were so far right they made Attila the Hun look like Mother Theresa. Finbar Dalgliesh affected a ‘man of the people’ persona – all pints and fags and jolly banter – but he was as oily as the sea around the Exxon Valdez. And if he was here
, he smelled votes.
Mo had fallen silent, as had the crowd, and Rebecca saw her shoot a glance like a slap towards Scott. It was plain Dalgliesh’s presence was a surprise to her, if not to her son, who shrugged. Whether he was denying any part in this or dismissing the rebuke, Rebecca couldn’t tell.
Dalgliesh reached Mo’s side and gave the crowd a wave before placing a hand lightly on her shoulder to turn her away in order to exchange a few hushed words. Rebecca was a good few yards away but Mo’s rising anger was apparent as she listened. However, the woman nodded and stepped aside, her eyes finding Scott again and burning a promise in his direction. Chaz focused his lens on Dalgliesh as he stepped forward to face the crowd; he studiously ignored the camera, yet made sure it caught his good side. The two bruisers positioned themselves close enough to intervene should anyone prove too boisterous yet far enough away so as not to draw attention.
Dalgliesh stretched out his arms like he was appealing for a group hug. Some of the crowd seemed willing to share the love but others looked like they would rather cuddle a rabid grizzly.
‘Friends,’ he said, ‘I’m Finbar Dalgliesh.’
Rebecca rolled her eyes. She’d seen him do this before. They knew who he was. He knew they knew who he was. This idea that he might be unknown to them, that he had to introduce himself, was a pose. If there was a media lens uncovered in Inverness, Finbar Dalgliesh would turn up eventually, flashing the best dental work money could buy and turning whatever issue was on offer to his advantage.
The ‘Tan in the Suit’ was his nickname among the press pack, which at once deplored and cultivated him. He was a walking story. Wherever he went, quotes and sound bites followed. And here he was, doing the Dalgliesh Hustle at Mo Burke’s demo. Mo was clearly unhappy about the situation – she might be the rock on which he would perish.
Even so, Rebecca’s pen was poised to take notes.
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