by Val McDermid
‘He told you how it works?’
Danny nodded, losing the struggle to stay cool with a cheek-stretching grin. ‘The whole thing. Just like I’d worked out. There’s a minimum investment of a hundred grand. The so-called investors buy a yacht, cash on the nail. A crew sails it to Nassau, no questions asked. Jespersen’s sell the boat and the payment goes into a brand-new numbered account in a Nassau bank that has no obligation to tell the UK taxman anything. Presumably Paragon takes a slice off the top. Then Maclays take a ten per cent commission. The investor pays the crew directly, in cash again. Jespersen’s take another ten per cent when they sell it on. So instead of paying the taxman eighty-three per cent of those cash bonuses, they probably only lose around a quarter. And it’s all completely illegal.’
‘That’s an amazing story, Danny. You’ve done a brilliant job. What a bunch of greedy bastards.’
‘I doubt that’s how they see it. Clever bastards, that’s how they’ll think of themselves.’
‘Not clever enough, it turns out.’
‘Serves them right for trusting my crooked brother.’ Danny looked away, his glee momentarily wiped away.
‘You’ll have to protect him when you write it, though?’
Danny groaned. ‘I’m starting to think he doesn’t deserve protection.’
‘Is that why you dropped his name into the interview? Even though you said you wouldn’t?’
‘No, I told you. I realised if I relied on the name of a previous client alone, Maclay could blow me out with one phone call and that would alert all of them to cover their tracks somehow. I did it really casually. “Some guy called Sullivan,” I said, and just motored straight on.’
Allie shook her head. ‘I hope that’s good enough. I can’t help thinking of your family, Danny. You told me just last week how close you all are, how well you all get along. If Joseph is as much of a smoothie as you say, he’ll find a way to make this all your fault. He won’t be the outcast. You will.’
He made a fist and punched one hand into the palm of the other. ‘I don’t care for myself. But I don’t want to hurt my mum and dad. Joseph’s adopted, did I tell you that?’
Allie shook her head.
‘They thought they couldn’t have kids, so they adopted him. And then I came along.’ He laughed without warmth. ‘The original miracle baby. They’ve bent over backwards all his life to make him feel like he was the one they really wanted. It’d break their hearts to see him disgraced. And yeah, you’re right. I’d be the one to catch the blame.’
‘So can you find a way to do it? To keep Joseph’s name out of it?’
Danny scowled. ‘I was thinking about it all the way back from Southampton. I can put Joseph’s boss front and centre.’
‘You think that’ll work? What about the byline? Presumably he’s Joseph Sullivan?’
Danny shrugged. ‘Chances are, either his boss or someone else in Paragon will put two and two together when they see the byline.’
‘And they’re not going to believe him when he says it’s just a coincidence.’ Allie could see her arguments were making Danny uncomfortable, but she suspected things were going to get a lot more uncomfortable for him if he paid her no heed.
Now there was a stubborn cast to his jaw that she’d not seen before. ‘He’ll maybe get the bullet, but I know Joseph. He’ll not carry the can inside the family. Or when he goes looking for another job. He’ll find a way to argue his innocence. Make out that when he found out what was going on, he came to me. He’ll find some lie to keep his nose clean.’
Allie reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘At least you can leave his name out, though. It’s not like you’re weakening the story. Just giving it a wee tweak.’
Before he could say more, they heard voices and one of the librarians walked into the reference room. ‘Oh, lovebirds,’ he teased.
Allie drew her hand back as if Danny was a sheet of flame. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ Her voice was a tease. ‘I see why you’re down here and not up on the editorial floor.’
That earned a genial laugh, at least. ‘Conference is out,’ the librarian said.
Danny pushed off from the shelves and made for the door. ‘See youse,’ he muttered on his way out. Allie followed, but slowly. It wouldn’t do to return to the newsroom hot on Danny’s heels. Bad enough that the librarian had teased her. She’d have to talk to Danny again about Joseph. Just not somewhere with prying eyes and flapping ears.
To fill a few minutes, she picked up a paper. The Scottish National Party had formed an unlikely alliance with maverick Labour MP Tam Dalyell to shout down demands by Scots living abroad, and others of Scots descent, to have a vote in the upcoming devolution referendum. They insisted that only ‘full-blooded Scots’ should be entitled to vote. ‘Jeez,’ Allie muttered. Five years away, and this was the country she’d come back to?
On the other hand, there might be something in it for her. Allie tucked it away in a corner of her mind to follow up when she had the chance. Those politically connected women Rona had talked about might have something to say about ‘full-blooded Scots’.
13
His conversation with Allie had crystallised Danny’s own fears about the effect his story might have on his life. He loved his parents. He’d been keeping aspects of his life under wraps since he’d first become a journalist. The secrets he kept would only lead to arguments and disapproval. The truth was, if Danny had explained the reality of what he had to do in the service of the news and beyond, his parents would be horrified. As it was, they’d be appalled at the revelations about Paragon Investment Insurance. Adding Joseph to the mix would break their hearts.
He was sent out on a job within minutes of his return to the newsroom but he had no recollection of what the story was. He sat hunched in the back seat of the editorial car, ignoring the lively football conversation going on between the photographer and the driver. What had he been thinking, putting his own ambition ahead of his family?
It wasn’t too late to pull back from the exposé altogether. He wasn’t like some of his colleagues, who would shout from the rooftops about a lead even when it was nothing more than the barest whisper of a possible story. But Danny’s habit of caution suited him; it meant he didn’t have the newsdesk forever on his shoulder demanding an update on his progress. And that in turn meant he could still walk away from it. He could tell Peter McGovern that it hadn’t panned out, that there was a perfectly innocent explanation he hadn’t grasped because he was a babe in arms when it came to financial arrangements. It’d be no skin off McGovern’s nose.
And Allie would understand. Wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t think any less of him if he killed the investigation, would she?
Danny knew the answer to that, and it wasn’t the one he wanted. He didn’t know Allie well, but what he did know was that she was no coward. She didn’t get into fights with the newsdesk execs for the sake of making a feminist point, but she had a way of putting things that gave them pause. Take that triple murder in Dundee a few weeks ago. The crime corr had been all for insinuating the three women had been bringing men back to the ‘death flat’ for drink-fuelled orgies, even though two of them were residents of a home for single elderly women and the third had been their cleaner, only two weeks married. Allie had listened to the discussion then suggested they could generate more impact on readers if they made the victims out to be three ordinary women who’d been terrorised and killed by violent robbers. ‘I thought we wanted our readers to care about our stories?’ she’d asked, wide-eyed. ‘Feel the fear those women felt?’
Angus Carlyle had paused and given her a shrewd look. ‘The lassie’s got a point. Writing it that way, it gives every woman in Dundee the shivers. I like it. See, I told you, boys. Having a woman’s perspective has its uses.’
Danny had caught her eye as Allie returned to her chair, and she’d winked at him. ‘Nicely d
one earlier,’ he’d said in the canteen queue later.
She’d shrugged. ‘There was nothing in the report that even hinted at the angle they were thinking of running. I was trying to make them see salaciousness about sex isn’t the only way to sell papers.’ Then she’d been served ahead of him and headed out, her bacon roll in a brown paper bag.
So Allie wouldn’t be impressed if he took the coward’s way out. And yet, she’d been the one to point out that he’d have to protect his crooked big brother. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already been thinking that very thing himself. The idea of pinning the whole thing on Joseph’s boss had been the only alternative he’d come up with on that long drive north. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed fraught with risk. What if the boss then tried to pin it on Joseph when he was confronted with what Danny had discovered? What if he made the connection between Danny and Joseph and made out it was a conspiracy between the brothers? And even if Danny did walk away from it, Allie already knew enough to piece it together herself. She wouldn’t do it for the glory, he thought. But she might do it because it was the right thing.
There were so many ways this could end badly.
The car came to a halt. ‘Wake up in the back there,’ the photographer called cheerily, turning in his seat and smacking Danny on the leg with a rolled-up copy of that morning’s Clarion. ‘Time to meet the Osmonds’ nut.’
Now Danny remembered. A teenager who’d dressed as a waitress and hidden all night in the restaurant of the hotel where the singing sensations were staying. Too naïve to realise stars like them didn’t take breakfast in the dining room like everyone else. The happy ending had been that the story made its way up to the Osmonds’ suite and they’d sent down autographed copies of their latest album.
Danny trudged up the path, clichés already forming in his head. Nonsense like this was the reason he couldn’t let the tax fraud story go. How could he slam the escape hatch shut on his fingers?
Allie was halfway down the stairs at the end of her shift when she heard running footsteps clattering behind her. At the half-landing, she swung round, making Danny swerve into the bannisters to avoid hitting her. He clutched his side, exclaiming in pain. ‘Sorry,’ Allie said, ‘I thought it was somebody in a hurry to get past.’
‘No,’ Danny croaked. ‘Just somebody trying to catch up with you.’ He straightened up, wincing, and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a folded wedge of paper. ‘This is everything I’ve got so far. I know it’s a lot to ask but . . . ‘
‘I’ll knock it into shape. But not tonight, I’ve got something on.’ His crestfallen expression nearly softened her but she held firm. Much as she wanted to be part of this story, she wasn’t going to be anybody’s pushover. ‘I’ll work on it tomorrow night, OK? Then I’m on my days off, so you can bring a curry round to mine on Thursday night and we can go through the copy then.’
The offer seemed to perk him up. ‘Great. I really appreciate it.’
‘Have you made your mind up to leave Joseph out of it?’
Danny nodded. ‘If you can find a way to do it. It pisses me off that he’ll walk away with clean hands, but I can’t do that to my mum and dad.’
Allie frowned. ‘I’ll have to figure out a way to finesse how you saw the money.’
‘“An anonymous source” is the usual line.’ His mouth twisted in scorn.
She made a non-committal noise. They were going to have to come up with something a bit better than that if they were going to get it past the paper’s lawyers. ‘I’ll leave you a note of my address in your pigeonhole tomorrow.’
‘OK. Enjoy your evening.’
She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Trust me, you wouldn’t be saying that if you knew where I was going. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Allie sketched a wave and, aware of his eyes following her, trotted down the stairs and out into the freezing night.
An hour later, Allie paused outside one of the many pubs on Byres Road. The shops had been closed for hours and even the temptation of a warm pub and a cold pint wasn’t enough to draw many people out. Sleet was blowing through again, and it was that as much as her goal for the evening that overcame Allie’s nerves and drove her inside. She’d gone home to change out of her smart black trousers and dark red fine wool jumper. She’d gone for jeans and a collarless grandad shirt under a tank top, swapping her Burberry for a chain-store tweed blouson that she’d convinced herself was the epitome of smart casual. It was a judgement she’d been forced to revise when her mother had commented approvingly on it. But at least it wouldn’t frighten the horses at an SNP meeting, and that was the main thing.
The meeting was in an upstairs room. A couple of dozen people were already there, dotted around in tight little groups. Seven or eight middle-aged men in badly fitting suits with pints in their hands; a trio of thirty-something women, heads together in close colloquy; half a dozen obvious students, four girls and two nerdy guys who she suspected might be there because it was their only chance of being in female company; a scattering of earnest-looking young men studying folders whose covers displayed party branding; and two slab-faced men in their twenties who looked like they’d come straight from a building site, if any building sites were operating in weather like this. A few people glanced up as Allie entered, but nobody paid her much attention.
She made a quick decision and sat down by the students. She wasn’t so much older than them and she’d dressed to avoid intimidation. A girl immediately introduced herself and the others but before they could say more, one of the women detached herself from her friends and came over. ‘Hiya, I’m Muriel. I’m the membership secretary for the branch. We’ve not seen you here before?’
Allie smiled. ‘I’m interested in devolution. I thought I’d come along and see what the SNP has to say. Do I have to be a member?’
Muriel smiled. ‘You’re supposed to be, but in this branch, we don’t mind letting folk try before they buy.’ She pulled a bundle of papers from her bag and handed one to Allie. ‘There you go, an application form, if you want to take things further.’ She returned to her friends.
‘They’re desperate for people to join,’ one of the students said. ‘But they can’t even agree among themselves what they want. The hardliners want nothing short of independence and they think devolution’s a sell-out. The rest are gradualists. Devo now, jam tomorrow.’
‘Maybe so,’ one of the lads chipped in. ‘But they’re all we’ve got.’
Any further discussion was cut short by one of the suited men calling the meeting to order. The next hour was fundamentally the same as every other political meeting Allie had ever attended, either as a student or a reporter. Minutes, matters arising, droning through the agenda. About as inspiring as cold rice pudding until they got to AOB.
One of the students jumped to her feet and said, ‘I’ve got some other business. We need to lobby the Scottish Secretary about student votes in the referendum.’
‘Students get a vote,’ the chairman interrupted. ‘If you register to vote at your university address, you can vote there or at the address where you normally live.’
‘That’s the point I’m trying to make,’ she persisted. ‘We’re registered twice but we can only vote once. And since the government changed the rules and said we’d only get devolution if forty per cent of the registered electorate voted for it, we’re caught in a trap. A student’s “yes” vote is cancelled out by the other vote they can’t cast. And a student who votes “no”? Their vote is doubled up because the vote they didn’t cast also counts as somebody else who didn’t vote yes. You see what I’m saying?’
Allie scented a story. There was a moment of stunned silence as the student’s words sank in. ‘That cannae be right,’ one of Muriel’s pals said.
‘It’s right enough,’ the shorter of the two builders said. ‘It’s all part of the same conspiracy to stamp on us. We need to stamp back
.’
‘Enough of that,’ the chair said. ‘We’ll not have talk of violence here.’
‘It’s the only language they’ll understand,’ the other builder chimed in. ‘We’ll have to take to the streets before this is over, you wait and see.’
A hubbub of conversation broke out. As far as Allie could tell, nobody was taking either the students or the builders seriously. The young woman slumped to her seat. ‘Told you it’d be a waste of time,’ the lad on her left muttered.
Sensing a story, Allie leaned in. ‘You should take it up with the NUS. That’s what the students’ union’s for. Speaking up for your rights. Talk to your local president.’
‘That’s not a bad idea,’ another said. ‘These dinosaurs here don’t even get the point we’re making. We could do that in the morning. Get a protest moving.’
Satisfied she’d started something, Allie made her excuses and left. She had the quote and a name to attach it to. In the morning, she’d talk to the union officials. By conference, she’d have a story for the newsdesk. It turned out she owed Rona Dunsyre a drink rather sooner than she’d expected.
While Allie was in a pub in the West End, Danny was in a very different pub in the city centre. The kind of stories he would hear in the course of the evening were not the kind of stories that would ever find a home in the Clarion. But they were stories that spoke to him. He sat at the bar nursing a Bacardi and Coke, wondering whether he was pursuing this tax fraud investigation because he was drawn to trouble like a rabbit in the headlights. Or if it was simply that he found those bright shiny lights irresistible.
14
Allie stared at Angus Carlyle. ‘Is this some kind of a joke? I bring in a perfectly good news story, and you give me this?’
Carlyle undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. The unbuttoning usually didn’t happen till after the conference, but something was clearly bugging him today. Allie suspected it had something to do with her bringing in a devo story that the political team had missed. And instead of bollocking them for missing it, and letting her nail the story down and write it herself, he was giving it away to someone else and handing her this nonsense. ‘It’s a page lead if you handle it right,’ he grunted. ‘You’re good at the light-touch stuff.’