The DCI David Fyfe Mysteries

by William Paul

  4

  John Adamson, known to his friends as Jad, lay on his back on the top bunk and stared out through the cell window at a strangely dark-pale sky. A sparse sprinkling of stars was spread unevenly among the round-cornered rectangular shapes formed by the pattern of bars. The stars shone weakly, at times seeming to flicker and fade like tiny flames being snuffed out, but never seeming to grow any fewer in number.

  Out of sight below the stars, Adamson knew, were the lights of the city of Edinburgh. He had stood by cell windows in different prisons often enough by night over the last nine years looking out, sometimes catching glimpses of distant people hurrying about the streets. He imagined himself into their living-rooms and bedrooms, imagined himself leading a normal life with kids to send to school in the mornings and a job to go to during the day. He invented boring conversations between husbands and wives and passionate whispers between adulterers. He created an entire fantasy town inside his head and took his own place at the centre of it, observing everything that went on around him.

  That fantasy world seemed more real to him than his actual surroundings when he was allowed out on his training-for-freedom days and weekends, and nearly always he was glad to get back behind the solid barrier of the prison’s high fence and into the welcoming familiarity of his little cell with its window on to his own private world.

  Soon, however, he would be out for good. Out after nine long years of captivity. It had been a long time and recently the passing of the weeks and days had seemed to deliberately slow down just to mock him. The end was in sight at last. His parole had been authorised, signed and sealed. It would be good to be a free man again.

  The prospect excited and terrified him in equal measure. He craved his freedom but hated the idea of stepping outside the routine he had structured his life round for so long. He was worried about old enemies with long memories who had the advantage of being part of the world he was just joining again. But it was going to happen, whether he liked it or not. He had no choice. He was going to have to let go of the side and push out where his feet did not touch the bottom. Then it was sink or swim. He was as old as his highest ever snooker break, thirty-two, and he had learned his lesson. Next time he would not get caught.

  Adamson had a Rizla packet and a tin box of tobacco balanced on his chest. He rolled himself a thin cigarette and drew the edge of the paper over his tongue. The end flared brightly when he used the throwaway gas lighter. The walls of the cell soaked up the brief spasm of light. Tiny flames ate hungrily at the paper until they reached the guts of the cigarette and settled to a red glow. Flakes of charred, black paper floated down on to his bare skin.

  Charlie Morris, another failed armed robber, who occupied the bottom bunk in the cell, punched the bottom of the mattress. ‘What’s the matter, neighbour?’ he said. ‘Can’t get to sleep thinking about all the havoc you’re going to create outside once they let you go?’

  ‘Right first time,’ Adamson replied.

  ‘Pass us down a fag then, Jad, and I’ll keep you company.’

  Without looking, Adamson let his arm hang down. He felt fingers take hold of the small cigarette. Once it was gone he began packing another paper full of tobacco from the tin. Poor Charlie, he thought. Another year at least for him to serve. Adamson smiled contentedly at his good fortune.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ Morris said.

  ‘The bidding will have to start a lot higher than that.’

  ‘You’re a lucky bastard, Jad,’ Morris said. ‘Everything arranged for you. A flat and a job to go to. Who says crime doesn’t pay?’

  ‘Everything comes to him who waits, Charlie. Keep the faith and you’ll be all right.’

  From his bunk Adamson stared at the star-speckled night sky beyond the bars. Now that he was so close to freedom the recurring images of events that had deprived him of it kept playing in a continuous mind game inside his head; the ambush of the truck by him and his partner Mad Mike Barrie, the astonished faces of the security guards, the unexpected weight of the banknotes and the sheer exhilaration of counting the money. One million, three hundred and seventy-eight thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds, all of it in used, untraceable notes destined for incineration. It was a nice round number once they had used the surplus fivers to buy a Chinese carryout and to light celebration cigars.

  It couldn’t last, of course. It went from there to the guttering candle, oily to the touch, and the sharp, eye watering smell of petrol. Then came the chase across the city and the wailing sirens and crackling megaphones and flashing blue lights, punctuated by the gunshots before the final explosion and the blood plopping like fat raindrops on the top of his head as it dripped from the ceiling. Every time he thought about it he could feel the warm spots break out on his scalp. Every time, he reached up and ran his hand over his head to convince himself it was only his imagination.

  By comparison with the robbery and the arrest, the trial seemed to have been conducted in slow motion. The judge was a fat man, sitting behind a red-draped bench in front of shelves of books. His head was perched on top of a pyramid of red and white robes and his black bushy eyebrows settled low on his forehead.

  Adamson remembered his voice most acutely. It had flowed like treacle, the words seeming to queue up in his throat, each waiting its turn to be released and to fall ponderously from his mouth. Adamson believed he had performed well, sticking religiously to his story that he was very much the youthful apprentice, on a salary for his part in the raid rather than a share of the proceeds. Mad Mike had been the boss, the unstable criminal genius who preferred to blow his brains out rather than go to prison. Adamson was the boy from a deprived background, taken advantage of by criminal elements but basically harmless and ready to follow the straight and narrow now that he had learned his lesson. Mad Mike’s brother paid for a good lawyer who made him sound more sinned against than sinning.

  He was not surprised at the jury’s guilty verdict but he was shocked at the length of sentence he received. Twelve years when his QC had promised three at the most. Old bastard must have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning, the QC said unhelpfully afterwards.

  The sentence was upheld on appeal and Adamson was convinced its severity was related to his stubborn refusal to agree that the money was still out there somewhere. There were all sorts of rumours. The police told him they believed it had somehow been smuggled out of the country to Mad Mike’s widow Angela, who had fled to Spain a week after his death. The original trial judge certainly thought Adamson knew more than he was telling.

  Not a day went by in prison without Adamson thinking of that judge. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he looked, all dolled up like a wee lassie playing dressing-up games with granny’s clothes. The man dominated his thoughts even more than the money. Inside prison, Adamson soon realised few people were prepared to believe his story either. Everybody assumed he had his share stashed away as a pension fund and, since it gave him a certain celebrity status, he never denied it outright. He didn’t admit to it either. He allowed the legend to grow. It gave him self-respect. It was his secret and he guarded it jealously.

  ‘Mike went daft,’ Adamson had told a hushed courtroom during the trial. ‘He was battering his head off the walls. He kept firing the shotgun through the window, loading it again and again until he only had two cartridges left. Then he turned on me and I thought I was dead. “They’re not going to take me alive, Jad,” he said, “I’d rather be dead.”’

  Adamson had spent weeks carefully composing the story of what went on during the siege, rehearsing every last detail to make himself word perfect. But once he began telling it he had to bite the inside of his lip to stop himself laughing. It was so melodramatic and over the top. They’re not going to take me alive, Mike had said like a bad actor on speed. He fully expected them to laugh at him, to shake their heads impatiently and demand to know the real truth. But they didn’t. They listened solemnly and they apparently believed him. The newspapers had lapped it
up, relating it in screaming headlines. The reporters wrote it as if they had been present in the barricaded room as events unfolded so rapidly, adding an extra layer of authenticity. They conveyed so well the tension and the fear and the panic and the everlasting image of Barrie, suddenly calm, standing in the centre of the room.

  ‘There’s no way out, Jad,’ Mad Mike said quietly. ‘We’re cornered but they’re not going to take me alive. Why don’t you follow me? Don’t worry. It’s not so hard to die.’

  And he put the barrels of the shotgun in his mouth and blasted the top of his skull off. The lead shot had flowered upwards and outwards, splattering the ceiling and walls with a scarlet circuit diagram of how Barrie’s blood and brains and bones had all fitted together. Adamson had been staring at it open-mouthed when the police burst into the room.

  Adamson grinned. He swung his legs off the bunk and sat up to light his cigarette before slipping to the floor. On his first night of imprisonment at Peterhead he remembered looking out the cell window and down across the wide bay where a clutch of long-backed oil supply boats circled their moorings in the shadow of the huge structure of a drilling rig in for repair hard up against the breakwater. Beyond the boats was a tight huddle of grey houses by the edge of the sea. In those houses his fantasies had taken root.

  ‘Not long now, Jad,’ Morris said from below. ‘Remember to send me a postcard.’

  Adamson sniffed. A tiny sliver of unreality forced its way into his thoughts. His guts hardened like setting concrete. Suppose, it suggested, you’ve been tricked. Suppose Mike Barrie didn’t burn the money. Or suppose it did find its way to the grieving widow in Spain. How she must have been laughing at him these last nine years. How she must have laughed.

  On his away days from prison he had passed the scene of the crime a hundred times, smelling again the petrol fumes, seeing again the innocent candle flame casting its dancing shadows over the bundles of notes. It was impossible. Mike Barrie could not have achieved such a thing. And yet, like the prisoners who thought he was hiding the truth, perhaps the truth had been hidden from him. What a brilliant secret that would be.

  ‘You will learn that the world owes you nothing,’ the judge had said, black eyebrows quivering. ‘Everything in this life has to be paid for, one way or another.’

  In the cell, Adamson shook his head as though bothered by a troublesome fly. He was looking forward to his release. Freedom was a seductive creature. Once he was out for good he would be able to find out if he had been tricked. But he had promised himself it was not true and that his secret remained as fresh as ever. It had become an article of faith, a certainty, a promise that could not conceivably be broken.

  ‘Cross my heart,’ Adamson murmured, unaware that he was tracing the tip of a forefinger over his chest. ‘And hope to die.’

  5

  The rough surface of the old tarmac road leading down to the beach at Portobello petered out into the sand. Gus Barrie reversed the battered blue Ford Transit van slowly through the shadows of the empty buildings on either side. He stopped as soon as the rear wheels showed signs of sinking in.

  ‘Dump him,’ he said, putting the van into first gear and keeping his foot on the clutch.

  In the back of the van Billy and Sandy Jones moved awkwardly in the cramped space. Close up, they were hard to tell apart. At a distance it was impossible. The only real distinguishing features were the lion head tattoos on their necks, Billy’s on the left side, Sandy’s on the right. And the single gold hoop ear-rings, Billy’s on the right, Sandy’s on the left. But it didn’t matter which was which anyway. They were as dumb as cattle, loyal as puppies, biddable muscle on the hoof that helped to keep Barrie ahead of the game. When he whistled, they were always ready to jump.

  The inside door handle on the back doors was stiff and had to be thumped hard to make it open. The dull ringing of the metal sounded unnaturally loud in the dark silence of the street. The brothers heaved their burden to the edge and looked over their shoulders for final confirmation.

  Barrie saw the scene in the rear-view mirror. He was warm in his thick sheepskin coat, oblivious to the cold wind buffeting the van and leaking in through the ill-fitting windows. A thin film of rain laced the air outside, covering the windscreen in a pattern of tiny dots. They had been sitting in the van in the street for half an hour to be sure it was safe. It was deserted. Nothing moved. The tenements lining it on both sides were derelict, soon to be demolished to make way for a new road. Ancient shop frontages that once attracted the custom of seaside visitors were boarded up. Flaking paint under the dim street lights still conveyed a few faded messages for ice cream and hot dogs. The tattered remnants of a red and white canopy flapped pathetically against the wall. In the distance on the curve of Portobello Bay the tops of the chimneys of the power station were lost in an opaque mass of low cloud.

  Barrie’s breathing was fast and shallow. Soon Angie would be back, he kept thinking. Soon Angie would belong to him, body and soul. It had taken him so long to achieve it, he hardly dared believe that it was now so close. He just had to get this business finished with. Tidy up the last few loose ends. Then it would be just him and Angie, just like he had always planned.

  ‘Okay, boss?’ Billy Jones asked.

  The image in the rear-view mirror snapped into focus for Barrie. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Dump him quick.’

  ‘Our pleasure.’

  Ross Sorley’s lifeless body splashed down into the soft sand with barely a sound. The head, wrapped in a Safeway plastic bag, lay at an impossible angle along an outstretched arm. The sand started to darken around it as blood oozed out.

  The doors of the van creaked shut and the Jones brothers returned to their seats on the inside wheel hubs. The van pulled away on to the firm tarmac, moving unhurriedly. Sorley’s body behind quickly merged into the obscurity of the sand.

  Barrie fought his impatience to keep the van’s speed down. Everything would soon be in place and perfect. It wasn’t going to be fouled up now. He had attended to every last detail, worked out every possible combination of circumstances. There was risk, huge risk involved, but all life was a risk. Barrie had grown to like it that way.

  ‘Someone will get a nice surprise come the morning,’ Billy Jones said and Sandy giggled like a girl.

  In the mirror Barrie saw the silvery reflection of the moonlight on the sea. He frowned a little although he didn’t know why when he saw that it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the sky began.

  6

  Head down, legs and arms pumping hard to maintain forward momentum on the steep slope, Father Donald Byrne reached the crest of the hill and immediately collapsed on the grass. He gulped huge mouthfuls of air, sucking it down into lungs red-raw and burning with the effort of extracting enough oxygen to meet the demands of muscles and limbs pushed to the limit of their endurance. He lay helplessly, stretched out face down in the crucifix position. A pulse thumped in his temple and echoed in his chest as his bloodstream circulated relentlessly and restored the badly depleted supplies of energy-giving oxygen. His breathing gradually subsided over a period of minutes to a more normal rate. He rolled over on to his back. His track suit hood blinkered him, framing an ellipse of sky and a group of dimly shining stars. Beyond the edges of the sight-limiting hood Byrne sensed the presence of people. There were always plenty of people about on Calton Hill at night, mostly innocent tourists and far-from-innocent homosexuals seeking their own kind to commit their particular brand of sin.

  Below them, the city of Edinburgh spread out evenly, following the contours of the land in every direction to the River Forth in the north and the Pentland Hills in the south. The castle crowned the central rock alongside the arrow-straight avenue of Princes Street. The old Royal High School building was on one side and buildings proliferated everywhere at the foot of the hill like a growth of yeast. In the streets between, tiny people scurried for shelter.

  At his feet was the incomplete Greek-style temple that wou
ld have been a memorial to the dead of the Napoleonic wars if the money had not run out before the job was finished. And above his head from where he lay, across a sea of roofs and graveyards and hidden streets, Salisbury Crags formed a dark wall guarding the hump of Arthur’s Seat in the centre of Holyrood Park. It was easy for Byrne to appreciate why Greek civilisation placed the home of their omnipotent, vengeful gods on a mountain. All the better for throwing thunderbolts from.

  He had dressed quickly while Lillian watched him from her nest of pillows on the bed, pulling on the vest and shorts and the light blue track suit with its bright yellow shoulder flashes. The bulky training shoes seemed too large for his narrow ankles. The sweat band round his head of short-cropped hair completed the image of the dedicated jogger. He had snapped smaller sweat bands on his wrists and retrieved the silver crucifix from the living-room floor to stuff it into a deep pocket for safe keeping.

  ‘Same time next week,’ Lillian said from the bedroom.

  She was sitting upright against the pillows. The bed covers were bundled round her waist and she was buffing her fingernails with a cleaning pad. Her head was framed in a cloud of tousled hair and her nipples were like dark pink stains on the small mounds of her breasts.

  He was a priest for God’s sake, momentarily shocked at the shameless flaunting of her body. How had he let this happen? And it wasn’t just the sex with Lillian, but everything else that had followed on from it.

  ‘It’s rude to stare,’ Lillian had said, staring back at him in a way that seemed to penetrate through to his very soul.

  Byrne had used to regard himself as a simple sinner. He used to think it had been his idea to take advantage of Lillian when she came to the church looking for solace as a confused young woman with no one to turn to. She had cried on his shoulder and he had comforted her. She had wept and he had kissed the tears away, but once the tears were all gone he did not stop kissing her.