by Owen Mullen
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
Before The Devil Knows
You’re Dead
Owen Mullen
Copyright © 2017 Owen Mullen
The right of Owen Mullen to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2017 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-912175-09-3
Have you read the other books in Owen Mullen’s PI Charlie Cameron Series?
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Games People Play
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Old Friends and New Enemies
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Colin McMillan sat in the car outside the flat and stared at the window. More than once he started to get out and changed his mind. The light was on. She was there; he’d seen the curtain move an hour ago. Since then there had been nothing. For two months he had tried and failed to have a conversation with his estranged wife. Joyce didn’t want to speak to him and hung up as soon as she heard his voice.
Without her, the house in Bearsden where they had lived for fifteen years, was just bricks and mortar; rooms filled only with memories of them as Colin and Joyce: The McMillans.
On their last night together they’d made love in the dark. And in the dark, Joyce was more demanding than he had ever known her. She devoured him, scratching his back and beating her fists on his chest, like a trapped animal trying to escape. When it was over she turned away, sobbing quietly into the pillow. Because she had known.
The following evening, McMillan returned to find his wife gone, leaving him confused and unhappy and alone to wonder what he had done wrong.
Since then, he had drifted through days that became weeks then months, paralysed with sorrow; unable to come to terms with it. He had been here on other nights, hoping she would talk to him and at least tell him why.
The edge of the curtain drew back a fraction. For a couple of seconds, a face peered down at him. Or did it? He couldn’t be sure. It had been a long and difficult day in theatre dealing with a series of complicated deliveries; the surgeon was exhausted. Seeing what he wanted to see, maybe. So he waited, afraid of causing a scene, knowing it wouldn’t help. After twenty minutes, he came to a decision. Whatever the problem was it could be put right. He had to have one last go at saving his marriage.
McMillan got out of the car.
His footsteps echoed in the stairwell. A lonely sound. At the top he stopped. The door of the flat was open. He called. ‘Joyce! Joyce! Joyce it’s me!’
McMillan went inside, along the hall and into the lounge at the end. There was no sign of his wife. He tried a bedroom. Nobody there. Not in the kitchen either. In the second bedroom he found her and his world fell apart.
Joyce was hanging from a cupboard door. She had cut an electrical cable off something and used it as a makeshift noose. Her features were distorted by the agony endured in the minutes before she died. Saliva trickled from her mouth and a viscous strand of mucous hung from her chin, like the beginning of a spider’s web. The tip of her tongue poked from between her teeth below bulging eyes that didn’t see.
The books she’d been standing on lay scattered on the floor and her arms were by her side, pushed tight inside the belt she had been wearing so she wouldn’t be able change her mind. Joyce McMillan hadn’t wanted to save herself.
Colin McMillan ran to his wife and threw himself around her waist, sobbing like a child. He eased her lifeless body off the door and carried it into the lounge. On the couch he placed a pillow beneath her head and ran his fingers tenderly through her hair.
What kind of hell had she been in to do this?
The answer was on the coffee table. Three crisp pages slipped under a half-finished cup of tea, still warm. Joyce’s small unhurried hand explained all her husband hadn’t understood, and more.
At the end she had written ‘I’m so sorry. Forgive me. Please.’
Reading it broke McMillan’s heart. It hadn’t been passion that final night – it was despair. When he finished, he was crying. He turned off the light and sat staring into the darkness, drained of every emotion except hate. Joyce’s face, horribly twisted in her final moments, would be with him for as long as he lived. He loosened his tie with a trembling hand. Eventually, he folded the sheets of paper and put them in his jacket pocket, reached for the telephone and dialed 999.
CHAPTER ONE
4.30 PM Hogmanay
Francis Fallon Hospital, Glasgow
The car drifted into the path of a bus headed for Springburn. Just in time, Gavin Law caught the flash of headlights and realised his mistake. He swerved back to his own side of the road and felt the wheels lose traction on the icy road. If he didn’t get a grip, there would be no new year for him. Fat snowflakes landed on the windscreen. He didn’t see them. The shocking turn of events had made him blind. He’d been a fool and he knew that now. His mistake had been to believe he was the one dropping the bomb. Wrong. They were ahead of him.
Half an hour earlier, he had taken the lift to the seventh floor of the private hospital and barged into the director’s office. Jimmy Hambley was alone. He looked up from behind his desk; if he was surprised, he didn’t show it. Law launched his ultimatum, boiling with righteous indignation.
‘I complained months ago about Wallace Maitland. You know what he did to Mrs Cooper yet he’s still operating. Your inquiry disregarded my evidence, and cleared him, for Christ’s sake. The family has asked me to testify on their behalf in their legal action and I’m going to. I’ll be the star witness.’
He leaned across the table.
‘You’re covering for Maitland because he’s your wife�
��s brother, but you won’t get away with it. Francis Fallon will be on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and it won’t stop there; the GMC will get involved. This is your last chance to do the right thing – admit liability and settle with the Coopers. After that, I expect you to deal with Maitland.’
The response was unexpected and more ruthless than anything Gavin Law could have foreseen. The director listened to the outburst, then calmly reversed the roles.
‘Mr Law. I was going to send for you. You’ve saved me the trouble. An allegation of misconduct has been made against you. Serious misconduct.’
Gavin Law sneered. ‘What is this? What the hell is this?’
‘A letter informing you of the process and your rights is on its way. You may wish to consider representation. That would be my advice. It may well be a matter for the police. As of now, you’re suspended from all duties. Please leave the premises.’
‘Allegation? Of what?’
Hambley told him and watched the colour drain from Law’s face.
The accuser had become the accused.
CHAPTER TWO
4.30. Hogmanay
City Centre, Glasgow
Three days after I agreed to try to find him, Dougie Bell passed within a yard of me on the street. He walked quickly, shoulders hunched, hands buried in the pockets of his Parka, as if he had somewhere he needed to be. And indeed he did, though he didn’t know it. His mother was in a coma in the Royal Infirmary and not expected to recover. If someone didn’t tell the boy soon it would be too late; he would never see her alive again.
It was late in the afternoon: dark and bloody freezing. The morning forecast of heavy snow by evening looked a safe bet; the road was already covered in a frosty glaze.
I was standing on the pavement outside the Italian Centre, opposite the old sheriff court, listening to Patrick Logue rant about Auld Lang Syne, waiting for a break in his monologue so I could make my excuses and get out of the cold. Bell’s eyes met mine. He half-nodded to me in one of those odd reflex moments when strangers mistake each other for someone they know. Patrick’s passionate defence of Scotland’s national poet kept me from recognising him immediately, and lost precious seconds in what would happen next.
Pat’s breath came in smoky clouds. ‘There’s an excuse for a Sassenach like yourself, Charlie.’
I’d been born in Edinburgh – as he well knew.
‘Don’t expect you to know better. But when people on STV and the like sing “For the sake of auld lang syne…” I want to kick their ignorant arses. Robert Burns was a genius. The idiots…’
I cut him off. ‘It’s him!’
Bell must have heard because he took to his heels and raced towards Royal Exchange Square with me and Pat Logue behind him.
In my office, his father had studied his hands and admitted the two men, constantly arguing, may have contributed to the massive stroke which would probably take a wife from a husband and a mother from a son. The last head-butting session on Christmas Day ended with the boy running out of the house with his new mobile – a present from his mum and dad. Bell Senior couldn’t remember what had started the row. How sad was that? But he told me this wasn’t the first time young Dougie had pulled a disappearing act, though he had always come back home when he calmed down. Not this time. And he wasn’t answering his phone, either. Stressed out of her mind and worried sick about her son, his mother collapsed on the kitchen floor on Boxing Day and hadn’t regained consciousness.
A sorry story any way you looked at it. The irony didn’t escape me. My relationship with my own father, although better now than it had been, remained uneasy; being in the same room for any length of time was still a trial for both of us.
From his picture, Dougie seemed no different than a thousand sixteen year olds in Glasgow; smiling and acned, eager and immature; into music and football. Beyond that, I knew little about him, apart from something that suddenly became very clear.
This guy could run.
Patrick had distracted me just long enough to give him a ten-yard start. That, plus a couple of decades, might be the difference between catching him or losing him. I considered myself pretty fit, but I wasn’t sixteen. Bell raced along Ingram Street, twisting through the traffic without slowing down. One car skidded on the icy surface and missed hitting him by inches. People stood aside to let him pass, astonishment on their faces. Nobody tried to stop him. I could hear Pat Logue somewhere close. It would be a mistake to depend on him bringing the boy down; his entire lifestyle was against it.
Dougie charged across Queen Street into Royal Exchange Square, past the statue of the Duke of Wellington, with the old soldier, as usual, wearing an orange traffic cone on his head – a Glasgow tradition.
Bell looked over his shoulder, the hood fell away and I saw his young face stretched tight with fear.
Why was he running?
Who did he think we were?
What had he done to react like this?
He was pulling away from me. Winning. Through the arch at the far side of the square I gained a little ground when he collided with a group of women coming out of the Rogano. He stumbled, almost fell, and regained his balance.
Dougie swerved right, into Buchanan Street. My legs wouldn’t carry me and my chest was on fire. I didn’t have any more to give. I wasn’t going to catch him; twenty-odd-years was just too big an advantage. Pat Logue came round the corner, puffing and blowing like an old man, his face the colour of ash. We stood together, watching the boy glide between pedestrians, like the teenager he was, still full of energy.
He must have sensed we had given up because he stopped and looked back at us, grinning. Then, with all the arrogance of youth, he held up his middle finger.
Patrick said, ‘Cheeky as well as fast.’
I didn’t see it like that. This young man was about to lose his mother. His future wasn’t what it used to be. There was a guilt trip coming that might never let him go. I felt for him. At sixteen, you could do things older people couldn’t do – like run – that left a helluva downside; the best part of a lifetime to regret. And everybody makes mistakes.
The boy threw a last victory wave at us, grinning like the cat that got the cream. From where we were, it was too far to be certain what exactly happened next. Tripped or slipped, I couldn’t say, but Bell went over and didn’t get back up.
We started running. When we got there Dougie was sitting on the ground, holding his ankle, blood oozing from his nose, his trousers torn at the knee. He looked through the crowd gathered round him, saw us, and blurted an unaskedfor confession.
‘It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Not sure I believe you, Dougie. Even if I had the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.’
His expression creased in confusion. ‘So why’re you chasing me?’
‘Why’re you running? Your father needs to speak to you.’
He realised we weren’t who he thought we were and assumed the surly default position his age group kept for adults; expressionless face; monotone voice. ‘He can fuck right off. I’m not interested.’
‘Yeah, you are. Can you stand?’
Patrick helped him to his feet. He winced, clearly in pain. My guess was a sprain rather than a break. Painful, not serious.
Pat said, ‘Think you’re out of the big game on Saturday, squire.’
Joseph Bell’s number was unobtainable. Of course it was. He would be at the hospital with his wife. I sent a text and two minutes later he called me back, sounding relieved when I told him I had his son. The son glared defiance.
‘If that’s my father, I’m not talking to him.’
Patrick told him to shut it, and I spoke quietly into the phone. ‘How are things, Mr Bell? Any change?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No change.’
We helped the boy walk to St Vincent Street, supporting him between us until a taxi stopped. Pat Logue and Bell got in the back. I spoke to the driver and paid the fare.
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Dougie didn’t ask where he was going. His father was waiting at the Royal Infirmary with news that would devastate him. Whatever the outcome, they would have to deal with it together, and it wouldn’t be easy. Maybe it wouldn’t even be possible.
Finding Joseph Bell’s son was my last piece of work in what, in many respects, had been a good twelve months for me. Most of my cases had come out all right. Of course there were exceptions. Shit happens and that’s a fact. Sometimes, there’s just nothing you can do.
The door closed and the black cab drove away, leaving me on a pavement in the centre of Glasgow with the world turning to ice around me.
-------
I stood on the steps outside the Concert Hall, behind the statue of Donald Dewar, and followed the lights on Buchanan Street to St Enoch’s Square in the distance. It was five minutes to five now, and the flagship department stores and up-market shops were closing. Most people had gone home to get ready for midnight; only stragglers remained. A lone piper in full Highland dress, stood at the entrance to the underground – known locally as the Clockwork Orange – a phantom in the snow that had started to fall, playing a lament that hung in the air. Bagpipes weren’t my favourite instrument but their sound touched something in me. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened.
Scotland invented Hogmanay and tonight, all over this country, Scots would say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new with handshakes and songs, laughter and tears. Auld acquaintance would be forgot and never brought to mind as sadness gave way to hope, and the promise of a clean slate. A fresh start. A chance to try again.
Who didn’t wish for that?
Pat Logue was right: Robert Burns was a genius.
Of course it wouldn’t last. It wasn’t supposed to last. But while it did, it was magic.
The piper was putting his pipes away – he’d been a brave man to stick it out so long. Later, he’d be in big demand. I wandered into Buchanan Galleries for a final few minutes of window shopping. When I came out, the brave man had gone, and the city was a white desert.