by William Paul
‘I do not judge, Chief Inspector. I serve as best I can.’
Fyfe sighed but concealed it behind a cough. It was the smug meekness of the clergy that annoyed him; the air of inevitability they projected that one day all unbelievers would be gathered inside the safe fold of their certainties. Maybe it would happen, Fyfe thought. Maybe one day he would see the light. Then again, maybe one day he would be sucked down into the dark. If he wasn’t there already.
Brother Patrick accompanied Fyfe back to his car and stood on the steps under the row of grinning gargoyles to watch him drive away. The light was draining away fast. Darkness was accumulating on the horizon like an army gathering. The house dipped out of sight as the car made slow progress over the rocky track back towards the main road. Fyfe took the hip-flask from his pocket and held it between his knees while he unscrewed the top. He lifted it to his mouth just as the front tyre lurched into a deep pot-hole and the flask bumped painfully against his teeth. Blood mixed with the whisky as it flowed smoothly down his throat.
23
John Adamson entered the familiar flat Father Byrne had arranged for him to have on his release from prison. He had been there before but only as a visitor. Now that he was free and possessed the key it somehow looked different. It was tiny, a bed-sit room with shower and toilet and a Toytown kitchen squeezed into what had once been a cupboard. After nine years in a succession of bare prison cells it seemed ridiculously spacious. And there were no bars on the window. He pressed his fingers against the fragile glass and ran them over the flaking white paint on the frame. Above his head a corner of the ceiling paper was hanging loose and the floor was covered with three scraps of different coloured carpet. The bed had a black iron frame and a soft mattress on top of creaking springs. There was a badly put together flatpack wardrobe and a dark wood table with a straight-backed pine chair. A gas fire occupied the tiled grate where a fireplace had once been set into the wall. It was burning with a dark red flame and the air was dry and warm. The television was a small black portable.
Adamson sat down on the leather padded reclining chair and surveyed his domain. The alcohol he had consumed in a pub he had found had made him very drunk and sleepy. Over a period of two hours he had downed beer and then vodka and then, as a special treat for his first day of freedom, a speciality cocktail, called a Mindbender. He had sat in a corner for a few hours, initially worried that everybody was watching him but ultimately not caring. When he staggered out, bouncing off the walls, he was sick on the pavement but still smart enough to keep moving. He had no idea how he managed to find his way back to the flat. Suddenly, it seemed, he was at the top of the stairs fumbling with the key. Then he was inside, remembering too late to lock the door behind him before he collapsed into the chair.
He pushed back so that the support panel for his legs extended and he was able to lie back at a comfortable angle. An image projected itself on to his closed eyelids. It was of his mother’s cloudy eyes lighting up when he had shared the secret of the money with her. It was his money, he had whispered to her. He had earned it and was dreaming daily of what he might do with it. She had died happy and contented, dreaming dreams of immense wealth for her only son.
Adamson could see what the oily Father Byrne was trying to do to him. Here is this person just out of prison after nine years with a secret that he thinks is his alone. Before he gets the chance to breathe deeply of the heady air of freedom he is to be hit with the revelation that the secret, or at least part of it, is shared. Shock tactics. Disorientation. Get to him before he has a chance to settle to his new life. Exploit his lack of self-confidence. Offer yourself as a solution to all his problems, a steady guiding hand in an unfamiliar world. Most of all show yourself to be on his side. Be his friend. Be a pal.
‘Suppose I tell you there is no money,’ Adamson said to himself, still lying back, still with his eyes closed.
‘I know there is money. Your mother did not lie. You would never lie to your mother.’
Adamson jerked into an upright position. Byrne was standing over him. It was a few seconds before he recognised him in his hooded track suit. In the doorway behind was an attractive redhead with eyes blinking like camera shutters.
‘I’m a priest,’ Byrne continued. ‘I know when people are lying. A little horned devil sits on their shoulder and whispers to them what to say. I have to cast out such devils.’
Adamson instinctively glanced at his shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t lie to you, Donald,’ he said, beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘That’s Lillian. She lives in the flat opposite. You’ll get to meet her soon. Once we’ve got our business out of the way.’
Lillian smiled over at him. A smile as cold as frost-hardened earth on a winter’s morning. Then she stuck her tongue out at the back of Byrne’s head and Adamson laughed.
‘You made me a promise, Jad,’ Byrne said, sniffing at the obvious smell of alcohol. ‘I’ve given you plenty of time. Forget the bloke Fyfe and the police. It’s just you and me in this. It’s time to deliver.’
‘Okay, it’s a fair cop,’ Adamson said.
Byrne grinned hugely. His eyes flashed in victory. Adamson smiled over his shoulder at Lillian. He could see the priest thinking that his strategy had worked. The tactics had been right. The unsure, vulnerable ex-prisoner emerging blinking into brightly lit society had succumbed to the psychological pressure as predicted. There had been a little blip when the unanticipated appearance of a police bogeyman had interfered with the plan. But now everything was all right. The ex-prisoner had been granted his blow-out. He was drunk and easily handled once more. He was not to be given the opportunity of any more time to think.
‘Where is it, then?’ Byrne asked.
Adamson climbed out of the horizontal chair and got to his feet, swaying unsteadily. He didn’t need any more time to think. He had decided what he was going to do. He winked at Lillian and put an arm round Byrne’s shoulders. Byrne was trying it on, trying to re-establish moral control over his subject. Not a hope, Adamson decided. Not a hope this side of hell.
‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
24
Sandy Jones huddled miserably in the entrance to the tenement close opposite Adamson’s flat. He was soaked to the skin and shivering uncontrollably. When he had called his brother from the phone box on the corner his voice had almost gone. He could only speak in a kind of croaking whisper. He had to squeeze into the narrow space between the pavement and the door to avoid the run-off from the lintel. At least the rain had all but stopped. His nose was running. His head was sore. He ached all over. He was not a happy man but he did manage a fleeting smile when Billy arrived in the van, drawing up alongside him with the iron-rough rumble of worn brake pads.
Sandy knew now that he should have gone into the pub that Adamson had chosen for his binge. But he hadn’t. There was no reason to keep out of his sight because he did not know him personally. He could have been warm and dry and had a few reviving drinks himself. Instead he had opted to stay outside. He had marched up and down in the rain, hiding under shop canopies and in damp doorways for two hours until it grew dark and the bastard came out and puked over his shoes. Sandy could have taken him then when he was pissed out of his head and didn’t know where he was. But Billy had told him not to do anything without permission so he waited, wiping his nose with the back of his hand at regular intervals, and keeping a safe distance between them as Adamson took his erratic zigzag route. He followed him into the tenement and up the stairs and watched him unlock the door and disappear inside.
‘Top flat,’ Sandy said from the relative comfort of the van’s passenger seat. His voice had a throaty echo to it like a badly tuned radio channel. ‘Over there. The one with the light on.’
‘Which one?’ Billy asked.
‘That one,’ Sandy said with a sneeze and nod of his head, reluctant to take his hands out of his pockets until he had thawed out a bit. ‘Oh no. There he is there
, coming out the close.’
‘Who’s the guy in the jogging suit?’
‘Never seen him before. They’re not going jogging anyway. Look, they’re getting into that car.’
‘Just as well I turned up, isn’t it, brother?’ Billy said. ‘Otherwise you would have been chasing after them on foot. They can’t get away now.’
25
Fyfe killed time over a couple of pints in a basement pub not far from Sylvia’s house trying to build up courage to go round and see her. His back was stiff and sore after the long drive from Tayside. He was over the limit for driving. He had phoned Catriona and asked her to keep the dogs for the night. He intended to stay in the empty flat from which his ungrateful tenants had done a moonlight flit.
He had put Father Quinn and Brother Patrick out of his mind as best he could. He had read the evening paper and knew that the double murder involved Georgie Boy Craig and his boyfriend, Michael Ellis. The other murder victim was Ross Sorley, a former associate of Craig’s. They were well-known criminals and druggies. All three had been garrotted in clinical fashion. All police leave had been cancelled, the paper claimed, but when Fyfe phoned in to the office he was told he had been allocated a shift from early on Friday morning when they would begin working their way through the usual lists of suspects and no-hopers. There was no real hurry. It was an internal argument amongst gangsters. With any luck a few more would end up with their throats sliced open. The risk to the public was minimal, however big the screaming headlines were written. Even so, the Catholic Church’s financial troubles and its priests’ moral failings would have to wait for another day. He called home to his answering machine but there were no messages on it. Until the next morning he was off duty and free to do as he pleased.
On the pavement outside pairs of legs, cut off at waist level, walked past the window across the back-to-front gold lettering on the glass. One female pair stretching down from a short skirt stopped and turned inwards to the window. For a moment they were motionless and every fold round the knees, every tuck of skin, every smooth curve at thigh and calf with backlit downy hair was caught in sharp focus against the fluorescent background blur of the street lights. Then the legs moved, turning to go back the way they had come, walking out of the narrow frame as others walked into it; legs in trousers, legs below heavy coats, legs with bags bumping against them, and legs with thin billowing dresses wrapped round them.
Fyfe looked away, draining his glass and signalling to the barman to get him another. Sylvia had fine legs, long and straight. Sitting there on the bar stool he could feel them tightening round him as they had used to do. It was a pleasant thought and it sent a little tremor of desire through him. Down boy, he told himself. It’s all in the past. No going back now. Except, he was about to go back.
He and Sylvia had drifted apart when their love affair ended. All passion was spent, neglecting their own firm insistences that they would remain friends. Initially they had met for the occasional drink but it was difficult to make small talk when there was so much between them that had suddenly become taboo. Even so he considered it a great shame when the meetings grew less and less frequent, fading into nothingness and leaving Fyfe only with a lasting memory that hung around like the smile on the face of the Cheshire Cat. Sylvia still made regular appearances in his dreams even though he was sleeping alongside his ex-wife Sally again. It was so convenient that, just as Sylvia renewed contact, Sally snapped out of her long depression and went off on holiday, leaving him on his own. Fortuitous it was. Circumstances conspiring to throw them together again. Mrs McMorrow would call it the Devil’s work. It made him nervous.
He had no idea what Sylvia was playing at, agreeing to marry an old relic like Greenmantle. And why she should want Fyfe at the party was a complete mystery. To rub his nose in it? He was fascinated to find out but he wanted to get to her without being trapped inside the artificial social restrictions of party-going. He wanted to have her to himself. He didn’t have the nerve to confront her sober but with his inhibitions suitably drowned he would be able to reminisce about old times. He would pretend he was seeing her to apologise for not being able to attend her party. Insincerity was a necessary by-product of the kind of civilised behaviour that was being demanded of him.
The pub was busy, he suddenly realised. People were crowding the bar on either side of him. Rock music thumped over a chorus of competing voices. The view out the window to the pavement was blocked by a roofscape of heads. He had stayed much longer, drunk much more than he had intended. Story of his life.
He thought briefly about collecting the dogs and heading home to the Borders where he could pull the covers over his head and wait for the morning. But he knew he would kick himself if he didn’t make use of the God-given opportunity to speak to Sylvia. He couldn’t ignore it. If she wasn’t there, at least he had tried. If she was there he might claim he had been obliged to work late. Plenty of murders around to back that one up. Maybe she would offer him a bed for the night. Why not? Old times. Old friends. Old habits.
He finished his pint and began threading his way through the crowd to the exit. Sylvia wanted to see him so he would go. It was a power she exercised over him. He did not resent it. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.
26
Father Donald Byrne parked his car as directed in a dark, tenement-lined cul-de-sac at the rear of the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Raindrop tracks scored the windscreen. The engine ticked loudly as it cooled.
‘Well?’ he said pointedly when Adamson made no move in the passenger seat. ‘What now?’
‘Follow me.’
They walked along the path into the park, sheltered by the eight-foot-high wall marking the boundary of the palace grounds. Their shadows overtook and fell back behind as they passed underneath the street lamps, seemingly floating in the air rather than being flat on the ground.
‘Is this a joke?’ Byrne demanded.
Adamson did not stop. His head was clear. He was no longer befuddled by drink. He knew where he was going and what he was going to do.
‘You wanted me to take you to the money. I’m taking you.’
‘You mean it’s here in Holyrood Park?’
‘Right under everybody’s nose these last nine years.’
‘But that’s silly. Surely somebody would have found it by now.’
‘Only if they dug it up and not many people dig holes in the park. The local bobbies don’t like it.’
‘Whereabouts is it?’ Byrne asked, a lowering of his voice indicating that he was persuaded.
‘On top of Salisbury Crags. A secret hiding place with a view.’
Beyond the reach of the lamps the park was intensely black. The high dome of Arthur’s Seat at the centre of the park was invisible under the grey clouds covering the sky. The bulk of the nearby crags loomed menacingly in the darkness. The two men crossed the main road through the park and found the beginning of the path. There was not a car in sight.
The steepness of the slope slowed Adamson and shortened his stride. He began to breathe more quickly, feeling his legs tire as his feet slipped on the slick, smoothly worn grass of the path. A cold sweat oozed out between his skin and his clothes making him physically uncomfortable. The rain had stopped falling, but the wind still had wetness in its blustery gusts. He knew he had to hurry, had to get it over with, but he held back so that Byrne was never behind him. He never once let him out of his sight.
Byrne was very fit, looking the part of the athlete in his hooded track suit. The slope had no noticeable effect on him.
‘It’s not far now,’ Adamson said, fighting for breath.
It took ten minutes for them to reach the highest point of the crags, where the ancient volcanic eruption had made the ground split apart and created a perpendicular cliff four hundred feet high. Almost directly opposite was Calton Hill, equally swathed in black velvet night, with the city lights spreading out around it in every direction. Ripples from a giant stone tossed into its centre.
‘I sometimes come jogging along this path,’ Byrne said, waiting for Adamson to catch up. ‘Where is the money? Show me.’
‘Near the edge.’ He pointed. ‘The flat stone there.’
‘Right under my feet. Well, what do you know?’
Adamson had regained his breath. He had only killed once before and it had not been too difficult. Mad Mike Barrie had paid him to do it, provided the knife and everything. All he had to do was follow this old guy when he left a pub and stab him. The victim was an evil-looking bastard with a scar running down the side of his face. It ran through his eye like thread through the eye of a needle. But he died easily enough. No one had ever suspected Adamson. No reason to. It was the perfect crime.
Adamson’s body itched all over. He watched as Byrne moved carefully towards the edge and leaned over to examine the rocks embedded in the ground. The ground was soft and muddy.
‘Which one?’ Byrne asked over his shoulder. ‘This one?’
‘No. The one right at the edge where no one would dream of trying to shift it.’
Byrne shuffled forward on his haunches. ‘Method in your madness, Jad my boy,’ he said. ‘I can see that now. Is it this one?’
Adamson went over to where Byrne was crouching. He raised his leg and placed the sole of his foot on the small of Byrne’s back. With the gentlest of kicks he toppled him over the edge. There was no scream, just a silent disappearance into the darkness and from below a dull thump as bone connected with rock.
‘Don’t worry, Father Donald,’ Adamson whispered into the night, feeling the words lifted from his lips by the breeze. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not so hard to die.’
27
Sandy Jones had to sneeze. He clamped his hand over his nose and deadened the sound as best he could. When he looked up the wind blew pinpricks of rain into his eyes. There was only one silhouette on the crags, a smear of dark grey against the only slightly lighter background. He recognised Adamson from the outline. He was standing motionless. The other one, the priest, had vanished.