Hour Of Darkness

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘There’s no need for that, Sergeant,’ Frankie Birtles protested.

  ‘Oh, but there is,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve still got the picture of Vicky Riley fresh in my mind, at the scene and during her post-mortem, when the pathologist opened her up and found among other things that she was carrying your client’s second child. I’ve got two kids of my own, so I do have a need, Miss Birtles. I need to hear him say why he did it.’

  ‘I never done it,’ Booth shouted, suddenly.

  Jack McGurk stared at him. ‘No? Then who did.’

  ‘Yon fuckin’ polis!’ Booth brandished his right arm. His hand was encased in plaster.

  The tall detective frowned. ‘Elaborate, please.’

  ‘The young lad, he did it. Ah never meant to shoot Vicky, but he hit me with his stick and the gun went off. He broke ma hand!’ Booth pouted, as if to emphasise that he was a victim also.

  ‘The statements that we have from the two police witnesses both say that the gun was discharged before DS Haddock’s baton made contact with you.’

  ‘It’s no’ true,’ Booth protested. ‘He hit me and that made me do it. I was never going to shoot her. That polis kilt her, no’ me.’

  ‘So who were you going to shoot? If not Vicky, it must have been one of the police officers. Right?’

  ‘Ah never meant tae shoot anyone. The safety catch was on.’

  McGurk looked at the solicitor, a faint smile twitching the corners of his mouth. ‘Frankie,’ he said, ‘I assume that you’ve read the crime scene report. Are you going to tell your client he’s an idiot or am I?’

  She winced slightly, shook her head, and leaned towards Booth. ‘Patrick,’ she murmured, ‘the firearm was an old Glock. It doesn’t have a manual safety catch.’

  ‘Do you have anything else?’ McGurk asked her.

  ‘Of course,’ she responded, while glancing sideways at Booth. ‘I have a client who has, let us say, an alternative lifestyle, which makes him feel the need for personal protection. Whether the weapon he carried was legal or not isn’t the issue here.

  ‘Patrick came into his home and found the door open; that alarmed him straight away. When he moved through to his living room, he found his partner and child being menaced by two unknown men. He assumed they were criminals and acted accordingly. Obviously, we’ll plead to a charge of illegal possession of a firearm, but as for the rest . . .’

  The acting DI smiled, with a degree of admiration. ‘You’re a fine advocate, Miss Birtles,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t help noticing that you weren’t able to look me in the eye while you were explaining all that. The police witnesses both say that Miss Riley called out “It’s the polis” while Mr Booth was still in the hall, then she was killed by his gun, in his hand.

  ‘You and I both know that to have even a slim chance of an accidental death plea being accepted, he should have surrendered himself there and then, as soon as the gun was discharged. But he didn’t. Instead he kicked DS Haddock four square in the privates and he legged it, as fast as he could. Why did you do that, Patrick?’

  Booth frowned and fixed him with a deep, piercing stare. ‘Because I was scared, mate, that’s why,’ he replied.

  ‘Accepted, but assaulting a policeman and running away was never going to make you less scared. And, as I said to your solicitor, it’s made your position even worse. You were never going to get away, man.’

  ‘Aye, fine, but all Ah could think about at the time was gettin’ the fuck away.’

  ‘Even with your partner lying dead on the floor, and your child sitting beside her with her mother’s blood all over her?’

  ‘Even then. It wasnae you bastards I was scared of, or doin’ some time. Have you any idea how much gear there was in the place?’

  ‘We’re not interested in the drugs,’ McGurk said, quickly. ‘That’s a separate investigation, by other people.’

  ‘Maybe you’re not,’ Booth wailed, ‘but I fuckin’ was! You guys’ll only bang me up for a few years, but there’s others would cut my feet aff wi’ a fuckin’ chainsaw. Look what . . .’

  ‘Patrick!’ Frankie Bristles exclaimed. ‘Enough. Don’t say another word. They have to prove you knew about the drugs.’ She turned in her chair and looked at the detectives. ‘If I advise my client to plead guilty to a reduced charge of culpable homicide, will you go for that?’

  ‘It’s not my decision,’ the detective replied, ‘but if the Crown Office agree to a plea deal we won’t oppose it. I’m not dropping the police assault, though; Sauce Haddock would be seriously annoyed if I did. As for the gun, your man will have to take his chances there. If he’s lucky, he might get off with no more than ten years, all in.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ the lawyer declared. ‘In that case this interview’s over. Charge him and let’s go on to the next.’

  Thirty-Six

  ‘Is this it?’ Dan Provan asked.

  ‘My satnav says so,’ Lottie Mann replied, as she drew her car to a halt and pulled on the handbrake.

  ‘If ye believe her; I don’t know how you can stand that bloody woman. If we’d followed her advice we’d be in Tarbert.’ He paused. ‘You are sure we’re no’ in Tarbert?’

  ‘The sign we’ve just passed read “Tighnabruaich”. If you’d been awake you’d have seen it.’

  ‘I was awake. Who could sleep with you driving?’ He blinked and peered across her at a terrace of white-painted cottages that stood above a raised embankment overlooking the wide flowing waterway on their left, and across to a hillside beyond.

  ‘So that’s the Kyles of Bute,’ Mann said. ‘I’ve heard about it often enough from my granny, but I’ve never seen it. She used to say that when she was a girl you could go for a sail on a paddle steamer that left the Broomielaw and came all the way here.’

  ‘Where did it go after that?’

  ‘Nowhere. It just went back to Glasgow.’

  The little sergeant frowned, bewildered. ‘What was the point of that?’

  ‘They called it a pleasure cruise, Dan.’

  ‘Was there a bar?’

  ‘I have no idea. If there was, my granny wouldn’t have been interested. She was a ginger wine woman.’

  ‘Let’s hope there was. It would have been no pleasure without one.’

  ‘My God,’ the DI muttered. ‘No wonder your wife left. Come on, Dan. Let’s go and see if the Father’s in. What’s the number?’

  ‘Ah’ve no idea; Diocesan Cottages was all that I was told.’

  They walked up a driveway, past an embankment until they reached an area in front of the quartet of cottages. Three small cars were parked, side by side, although there was room for more, and the red gravel was roughed up.

  ‘Four houses, three cars,’ Provan said. ‘Maybe he is out.’

  But as he spoke a door opened and a tall white-haired man stepped out, into the autumn sunshine. He was wearing blue denims and a short-sleeved shirt, with a red check pattern, and carried a rucksack, slung over one shoulder. He was tanned and although his skin had the striations of age, his arms were still muscular. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ Mann replied. ‘We’re looking for Father Donnelly.’

  He smiled, and both detectives felt its force. Even Provan, who prided himself on being the ultimate cynic, understood why Max Allan had described the priest as charismatic. ‘That’s me,’ he chuckled, ‘but I’m retired now, so I’m not really anyone’s father. Benevolent uncle is as close as it gets these days. How do I address you?’

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Charlotte Mann, and this is Detective Sergeant Daniel Provan. We’re CID officers from Glasgow.’

  ‘My, my,’ the emeritus priest exclaimed, ‘and you’re here looking for me? Did I need a licence to take the village lads out fishing in the boat?’ His expression changed; the smile vanished, to be replaced by a look of sadness.

  ‘Nobody’s been making allegations, have they?’ he asked. ‘There’s never been a reason why anyone might, but it’s become f
ashionable these days. A tiny minority of my colleagues betray their calling and it’s assumed that the virus infects us all.’

  ‘It’s nothing at all like that,’ the DI assured him, looking up and into his eyes, trying to judge whether there was anything hidden behind them, but seeing nothing. ‘As far as your boat’s concerned, I wish I had someone to take my wee boy out fishing, but there aren’t too many opportunities where we live.’

  ‘If you’re ever posted out this way,’ Father Donnelly told her, ‘give me a call and I’ll find a space for him. Look, I was just on my way there, to the boat, that is. Would you like to follow me down, and we can talk there?’

  ‘Aye,’ Provan grunted, ‘as long as we don’t wind up being sold as slaves in the Carolinas.’

  ‘Hah!’ he laughed. ‘So you’re an admirer of Robert Louis Stevenson, Sergeant. You know, most people think of Treasure Island as his masterwork, but I’ve always preferred Kidnapped: there’s so much more depth to it, more intrigue.’

  The DS dissented. ‘Nah, I don’t buy that. Ye cannae beat Long John Silver. I’ve arrested a couple of guys like him in my time, although they both had two legs and nae parrot.’

  Lottie Mann was astonished. ‘You’ve actually read something longer than a betting slip, Dan?’

  ‘You should ask your Jakey,’ he said. ‘Whenever I babysit for him, that’s what he likes; it’s his favourite story.’

  The priest climbed into his car, a grey Ford Fiesta that dated back to the previous century, and the officers followed. He turned left out of the driveway and drove along by the waterside for little more than a mile, past a sign that read ‘Port Driseach’, where the detectives saw a few boats moored in a small cove. Father Donnelly parked at the roadside and, as they joined him, pointed to one of them, an eighteen-foot white day-boat that even the Glaswegians could see had not been built for speed. ‘That’s her. It’d take her all day to get to Rothesay, Sergeant, never mind the Carolinas.’

  ‘How do we get tae it?’ Provan asked. ‘I’m no’ a great swimmer.’

  ‘Neither am I, so it’s just as well we have a wee inflatable to get us out there.’

  He led the way across the stony foreshore to a small dinghy floating at the water’s edge and secured to a steel mooring ring by a heavy, padlocked chain.

  ‘I share the boat with two of my neighbours, Father Smith and Father Edwards . . . they call him Father Ted in the village,’ he chuckled, ‘even though there’s not a trace of humour about him.’

  He held the dinghy steady as Mann stepped aboard and eased her large frame down into a seat. Provan joined her, more nimbly, and they set off, the priest in the bow, paddling the short distance to the boat. As they drew closer, the detectives could read its name: Holy Orders.

  ‘It’s more like Last Orders for my colleagues and me,’ Father Donnelly joked, as they boarded via a steel ladder at the stern.

  It occurred very quickly to Mann as she stood on the swaying deck that although the good ship Holy Orders was larger than it had seemed from the shore, it was doing strange things to her sense of balance. She sat down on a bench at the side.

  Their captain noticed her discomfort. ‘Have you ever been on a boat before?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘And you’re feeling a wee bit unsteady?’ She nodded. ‘Then find a fixed point, any fixed point, focus on it, and keep looking at it.’

  She did as he advised, fastening her gaze on a building on the hillside on the Isle of Bute, while the priest busied himself inside the covered cockpit. Gradually she felt her queasiness subside, and by the time he reappeared, offering her a blue plastic mug, the threat of imminent sickness had gone. ‘Tea,’ he said. ‘I always put a flask in my rucksack. There’s enough for the three of us, but I can make some more if you want. There’ll be no milk though.’

  ‘We’re polis, Father,’ Dan Provan grunted as he seated himself alongside Lottie. ‘We can drink it any way. Can we talk now?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, then flashed that dazzling smile again as he stood, mug in hand, looking down at them. ‘In fact I can hardly wait to hear what’s brought you all this way to do it.’

  ‘We want to ask you about a colleague of ours,’ Mann began, ‘someone we believe you know.’

  ‘I know several of your colleagues, past and present; some as parishioners, some as friends, some as both. For example, there’s Max, Max Allan, your recently retired assistant chief constable. Max plays with the other team, he’s Church of Scotland, but he was helpful to me when he was a young officer and I was in my first parish. We’ve been friends ever since. But I don’t imagine it’ll be him.’

  So that’s our Dan’s mysterious source, the DI thought. I should have guessed.

  Is he warning us not to push it with him? the DS thought, as Mann responded.

  ‘No, it’s not him,’ she said. ‘Actually it’s a former colleague, at least he will be former until the forces merge: Detective Superintendent David Mackenzie. I understand you’ve known him since he was a boy.’

  ‘Ah, David.’ He sat, lowering himself on to the bench facing them. ‘Yes I have. He was a troubled lad when I met him; his childhood had been unfortunate, I’ll say no more than that. I like to think I helped him in some way.

  ‘David says I saved his life,’ Father Donnelly admitted. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. The truth is his life was never in danger. His soul was, though, and if I’ve helped him save that I’ll be happy to take some credit for it. When I met him he was heading down the wrong pathway at a fair rate of knots. I showed him there was another way.’

  ‘How?’ Mann asked. ‘Forgive me, Father, but you have the air of a man who can handle himself in all sorts of ways. I believe you were a military chaplain in your twenties, isn’t that right?’

  There was a little less warmth in his smile. ‘You’ve been checking up on me? Fair enough, I suppose; it’s only reasonable to expect a police officer to do that. What you’re really asking is whether I beat some sense into him. Am I right, Ms Mann?’

  ‘It’s Mrs,’ she replied, ‘and it’s Lottie. Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Then the answer’s no.’ He laughed, softly. ‘You’re confusing me with His Excellency Archbishop Gainer, through in Edinburgh. I’ve never done that with any young man, although I have invited one or two who were given to picking on the weak to take a swing at me and find out whether I had the moral courage to turn the other cheek. I also suggested that if I failed the test, something might happen that we would both regret, them more than me. I was never taken up on it.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Provan retorted. ‘Behind a lot of these wee Ned hooligans are parents all too ready to complain about police brutality. I hate to think what they’d do if the priest gave their brats a thumping.’

  ‘True,’ he conceded. ‘In any event, that would have been entirely the wrong way to go with David Mackenzie; his aggression was beaten into him. What’s been implanted by violence can’t be removed that way; it can only be made worse.

  ‘No, when I met David, he was embarrassed by being highly intelligent, and proud of being tough. I tried to show him that he’d got it the wrong way round, and that changed him. Just like I got you to focus on that piece of hillside, Lottie, I got him to focus on what he was capable of doing for himself, rather than to others.’

  ‘I don’t understand any of that,’ Provan confessed.

  ‘The youthful aggression you’ve just told us about,’ Mann murmured, nursing her mug in her hands, ‘did it go away?’

  Father Donnelly shook his head. ‘No, I have to say that it never has, not completely. David still has a hair trigger. If you’ve worked with him you must know that.’

  ‘DI Mann hasn’t,’ Provan said. ‘I have, and sure I know it. You helped him show that he’s clever, Father, and maybe you put him in the CID room rather than in a police cell, but God never made him a nice man, and you couldnae change what He had programmed.’

  The priest laughed again. ‘You’re a bit of a spiritual thin
ker, Dan, aren’t you? You’re right, of course; it would be blasphemy to assert that I could. As for saving his soul, or helping him to do so, I suppose you would argue also that all I did was try to prevent him committing the sins that lay within him.’

  The little cop nodded. ‘I probably would.’ Then he fixed him with an acute, questioning gaze. ‘And if one of those sins was murder . . .’

  Thirty-Seven

  ‘What have you found out about this Vanburn Gayle? The day’s wearing on and it’s the ACC who’s asking.’

  Sammy Pye’s tone was serious enough to make DC Wright’s eyebrows rise. ‘I thought I was a genius, boss,’ she ventured.

  ‘In this force you’re only as good as the game you’re playing, not the last one. When that’s over, it’s over.’

  ‘In that case . . . no,’ she admitted, ‘I haven’t found any links between Vanburn Gayle and Duane Hicks yet, but I have found Gayle.

  ‘He lives in Makepeace Drive, Tranent. He’s forty-eight and he was born in Trinidad, but he’s lived in Britain for almost thirty years. Originally he qualified as a physiotherapist, but after he stopped being Holmes’s carer, he did a three-year nursing degree in London. He worked there for another four years, then he moved back to Scotland, to Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and finally to the Western General, here in Edinburgh. That’s where he is now.’

  ‘Well done so far, Jackie,’ Pye said, with a grin. ‘Not genius level, but thorough. Whose passport does he hold?’

  ‘British, for the last twelve years. On his first application, his father’s name was given as William Gayle, and his mother’s as Lorraine Alcott, both Trinidadian nationals. He also has a UK driving licence; that’s where I got the address.’

  ‘What about Hicks? Any more information on him?’

  ‘Yes, just in from the St Lucia Home Affairs department; Duane Hicks, aged forty-five, born in the town of Castries, the capital, parents’ names Michael Hicks and Teresa Clay, both St Lucian nationals. As you see, boss, there’s nothing there to link him and Gayle.’