Dark Suits and Sad Songs

by Denzil Meyrick

  He stared at his lined face and bleary eyes in the mirror. Alcohol’s effects were pernicious; he felt depressed, anxious, at odds with the world. The only cure was more booze, and the cycle would start again.

  ‘I will be needin’ a fucking scarf soon,’ he said to his reflection, as he lifted the razor to his face with a trembling hand.

  Daley made his way through the scrum of reporters already gathered outside Kinloch Police Office. He brushed aside their shouted questions, turning to face one insistent hack with a glare. He’d heard about Fordham’s extraordinary statement on the radio news. He wondered how the scandal would affect the new Police Scotland; what was clear, as Sarah MacDougall had said in her letter, was that Donald had most certainly not been working alone. He would have questions to answer about John Donald, and about Sarah’s letter. If it helped rid the police of the people who sought to undermine it from within, so be it.

  He had just sat down at his desk when the large figure of ACC Willie Manion appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Aye, good, Jim. Back in the harness already. We’ll no’ have many days as bad as that again, I hope.’

  ‘No,’ said Daley. ‘I sincerely hope not.’

  ‘Do you know about this bloody scandal, this Fordham woman?

  ‘Yes, sir. I do. If you got the chance to read Sarah MacDougall’s letter, you’ll see that it hasn’t exactly come as a surprise.’

  ‘Aye, right enough. That’s what I want tae say. We need tae get this bugger Abdic up tae Glasgow. An’ I’ll tell you, Jim, though I’m ashamed tae say it, I don’t know who we can trust. I want me and you tae do the job.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Daley, somewhat taken aback by Manion’s proposal. ‘Do you really think things are that bad?’

  ‘Fuck knows, that’s just the thing. I want Abdic safely under lock and key in Glasgow, then I can try and find oot how rotten oor job has become. Lucky me, I’m the one they’ve chosen tae open this Pandora’s box.’

  ‘Well, I did think it was no coincidence that you were having so much to do with the Donald situation, sir.’

  ‘Aye, when a’ the smart arses wae the degrees an’ the contacts cannae be trusted, send for the old boys, eh? Anyhow, until we know just how hellish things are, we’ll take it on ourselves tae get that bastard somewhere secure.’

  ‘I suppose that makes sense.’

  ‘I’m sorry aboot the lassie, an’ John Donald, tae. He was a corrupt bastard, but naebody deserves tae die like that. The official line is that he was killed in the line o’ duty.’

  While Daley tried to absorb this, Manion made to leave. ‘Tell me, does oor Brian know about this MacDougall lassie’s letter?’

  ‘Yes, he does, sir.’

  ‘Aye, well, good,’ said Manion. ‘Good that ye had someone tae kick it aboot wae, Jim. I’m telling you, you did the right thing keeping it quiet. It’s in my hands noo. We’ll get tae the bottom o’ these bent bastards.’ He opened the door to leave and then turned around. ‘Och, why don’t we take Brian up the road with us. If nothing else, it’ll keep him oot the pub.’

  DC Dunn watched as Daley and Scott prepared to escort Pavel Abdic to Glasgow. The prisoner was manacled hand and foot, then placed in a secure transport van, held in what was effectively a cage within the vehicle.

  Scott winked at her as he got into the front of the van. After smelling his breath, Manion had decided that he and his old friend would be passengers, leaving the driving to Daley. Dunn stared at the man who had become so important to her. The previous day’s events had proved to her that she loved him completely, with everything she had; but on the same day, she had lost him forever. Purposefully, she thought, he didn’t catch her eye.

  ‘Aye, she’s bonnie, right enough, Jim,’ remarked Manion as they drove out of Kinloch Police Station’s yard.

  Daley drove through the knot of reporters and said nothing.

  Rainsford and Dunn looked at the recorded footage of Alice Taylor on The Girl Maggie. She pointed out to the DS that in the minutes before the explosion, despite the heavy seas, the slight roll and sway of the image remained steady.

  ‘Could have had the camera mounted on some kind of stabilising frame,’ said Rainsford.

  ‘Then surely that would mean it would keep still and not move at all.’

  ‘Yes, I see your point.’ The DS rewound the last few moments of Alice Taylor’s life.

  There was a knock on the door of the CID Suite and Sergeant Shaw appeared.

  ‘I’ve got a Mr Ronald at the front desk. He wants to speak to whoever’s in charge. You’re it, Sergeant.’

  ‘What does he want? I’m quite busy.’

  ‘He has a farm down at the Mull, middle of bloody nowhere. I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say.’

  52

  Daley was fascinated by the easy relationship between Scott and Manion. The former was clearly worse for wear after yet another big night on the booze, but Manion joked and bantered with him as though the stench of stale alcohol didn’t exist.

  The weather had returned to its former glory. They drove along the winding road from Kinloch to Glasgow under blue skies, looking out across a calm ocean, its vista punctuated by purple islands in the haze. Through the open window drifted the tang of the sea, cut grass and the earthy, fresh smell always prevalent after a thunder storm.

  They had nearly reached the end of the peninsula, and were about to swing inland, when Abdic, who up until now had been abnormally quiet, started to yell, as though in pain. Manion called out gruffly, but the wailing continued, much to Scott’s irritation, as he was only now beginning to feel his hangover proper.

  ‘Pull up o’er there, Jim,’ said Manion. ‘I cannae listen tae that racket any longer.’ Daley slowed the vehicle and pulled into the roadside. ‘I’ll go and take a look,’ Manion continued. ‘Gie me the keys, Jim.’

  Daley and Scott heard Manion unlock the back door of the vehicle and, thankfully, the wailing stopped.

  ‘You OK, Willie?’ shouted Scott a few minutes later. He was looking in the rear-view mirror, but could see nothing.

  ‘This bugger’s been sick, lads. Could you gie me a hand?’

  ‘Fuck, this is the last bloody thing I need wae a heid like this,’ groaned Scott, getting out of the van.

  It took Daley a few heartbeats to process what he was looking at once he and Scott reached the back of the vehicle. But soon, it made horrible sense. Abdic was standing, free of his bonds, a smile spread across his huge, ugly face, while beside him stood Manion, a pistol in his hand pointing directly at them.

  ‘Right, lads, no heroics or this big bastard will take your heids off. Just walk down the path there.’ Manion waved his gun in the direction of a beaten-earth route through a pine forest.

  ‘Willie, no. No’ you, big fella, please, no’ you.’

  ‘Aye, me, Brian. Just get movin’ and get your hands behind your heids, the pair o’ you.’

  They trudged down the pathway, the sun blocked out by the thick canopy of trees. Daley, at the head of the little procession, was trying frantically to devise a means of escape, all the time knowing that Manion’s gun was pointed at his back.

  ‘Jim, I can see that grey matter o’ yours working overtime fae here. Just keep trottin’ along,’ said Manion.

  The path led into a clearing, an amphitheatre amidst the tall trees. ‘Right, stop here. Turn around, boys, but keep your hands where they are.’

  ‘You fucking bastard,’ said Scott. ‘Fuck, I’ve known you a’ these years, an’ I never once saw this.’

  ‘Shut up, Brian. I’ll suffer none o’ your sentiment. Maybe if you’d no’ pickled yourself a’ this time, you might’ve been a wee bit sharper.’

  There was a silence – a pause where nothing was said, the forest soundproofing the four men from the outside world. Without warning, Manion lifted the gun and fired two shots in quick succession.

  ‘Mr Ronald, how can I help you?’ asked Rainsford.

  The old farmer
, dressed in filthy bib and braces, looked back at him with watery eyes. ‘Aye, well, it’s maybe mair whoot I can dae for you, officer. I’ve got somethin’ for the lost an’ found.’

  ‘Really, sir, you must understand, we’re very busy at the moment. Please go with Sergeant Shaw here, and he’ll take a note of what you’ve found.’ Rainsford turned around to admonish Shaw, who to his surprise was not alone. He was standing beside a pretty teenager.

  ‘Aye,’ said the farmer. ‘I found her wandering along the beach, miles fae anywhere.’

  She looked tired, dirty and tearful, but she was alive. Alice Taylor was alive. She handed him a letter with shaking hands.

  ‘He gave me this before he left me on the beach,’ she stammered.

  This is my tribute to life and to Baka. We live the lives that have been given to us. Destiny is all, there is no choice. I take lives, but most of those I kill are evil men. As my life was returned to me, I return yours to you. The debt is paid.

  Manion kicked the body in front of him with the toe of his boot. ‘Aye, deid as the proverbial dodo,’ he said, smiling.

  Daley looked on in horror. ‘Why? Why would you do this? You’ve got a good job, reputation. You’ll have a great pension. Why would you sink to this – just for money?’

  ‘Money, aye. But no’ just that. You must know what it’s like, watchin’ a’ these young pricks getting on. Look at oor Chief Constable, for fuck’s sake; he’s nearly young enough tae be my ain boy. That job should have been mine. Aye, an’ it’s no’ just that. We can still make a difference, Scotland can go doon a different route. No need tae bow and scrape tae they bastards in London. Wae the right friends, we can make a clean break, no’ the half-arsed compromise that’s on the cards. A new, better country.’

  ‘By inviting in Russian gangsters?’

  ‘Och, just a means tae an end, Jim. I thought you’d be smart enough to realise that. Gie a little, get a lot. Fuck’s sake, it’s no’ as if we’ve no’ got plenty scum o’ oor ain. At least these boys made a good job o’ it. We’d soon have got rid o’ them once we’d got what we wanted.’ Manion looked down at the Abdic, his blood staining the earth.

  ‘Aye, so what noo?’ said Scott. ‘You’ll concoct a story aboot the Michelin Man here, an’ you managing tae escape the hero, am I right?’

  ‘No’ as puggled as I thought, Brian, but a wee bit mair sophisticated than that.’ Manion looked at Daley. ‘Everybody knows fine that me and Brian here are best buddies. You, Jim, like your auld boss John, were part and parcel o’ this corruption. You sprung Mr Abdic here, but me an’ Brian managed tae fight you off. You killed him in a struggle for the weapon, which I managed tae get, then I killed you and Abdic in self-defence. Aye, I’ll likely get the police medal, tae. Noo, best no’ prolong the agony.’

  ‘Stupid bastard!’ shouted Scott.

  There was a click and movement from behind the men that made Manion turn.

  ‘Put the gun down, sir,’ said Inspector Layton. He too was armed, standing on the edge of the clearing with three other men.

  ‘Chief Daley and Deputy Scott,’ said Michael Callaghan. ‘The places I bump into you guys.’ He smiled. ‘Now, do what the Inspector says, Mr Manion. Personally, I’d like to put a bullet through your skull, but that’s not how you do things in this country, is it?’

  Manion threw the pistol to the ground. ‘Aye, smart, boys, very smart. You’ll need tae do a bit more tae change things than this, though. I’m just a cog.’

  ‘A pure bastard would be mair apt,’ spat Scott.

  53

  The service was tasteful and well attended. John Donald was laid to rest in a coffin wrapped in a union flag adorned with the gold-braided cap of a chief superintendent. Rows of uniformed police officers filled the large church in Glasgow, while quiet hymns echoed around its vaulted ceiling: dark suits and sad songs.

  As the eulogy was read and fulsome praise heaped upon the dead police officer, it was all Daley could do not to be sick. He had been ordered to attend; an order which Brian Scott had refused to obey, regardless of the consequences. At the end of the service, Daley offered his condolences to Donald’s widow and left the church as quickly as he could.

  As he drove the long road home to Kinloch, he turned the music up loud to block the thoughts that plagued him. The whole episode had tainted even further his regard for the job he had been trapped in for so long.

  The scandal was tearing its way through the echelons of Scottish society, but much of it, like John Donald’s misdemeanours, was being covered up, silently swept under the carpet. The bile in Daley’s throat began to rise again.

  His resignation letter was written, tucked in the drawer of his desk where Sarah MacDougall’s missive had once been hidden.

  The day had been difficult, so instead of driving around the loch and up the hill to his home, Liz and the baby, he parked in Main Street and went to the County Hotel. It was a Friday evening, the bar was busy and the locals greeted him with smiles. Annie, as companionable as ever, served him his drink and asked how the service had been.

  ‘Aye, such a nice man,’ she said, bringing to mind her memories of John Donald. For her, like the wider public, the dead policeman was a hero, mown down doing his duty. Daley gave her a watery smile. ‘An’ whoot aboot oor Brian, was he there?’ she asked.

  ‘No, he couldn’t make it. Laid low with the flu.’

  ‘Mair likely a hangover,’ she said. ‘We’ve one o’ your colleagues in, at the back there.’ She gestured to the rear of the busy room in a furtive manner.

  Through the crowd, Daley spotted her as, almost at the same moment, she looked up and straight into his face. Mary Dunn was sitting with the young doctor. When she saw Daley, her broad smile faded, and for a second, she looked at him wistfully. For Daley the music stopped. The many voices in the room were silenced; he could only take in her beautiful blue eyes.

  She returned his wave shyly and turned her attention back to her companion, who had carried on talking, oblivious to the moment that had passed between the two police officers.

  He drained his glass of whisky and walked out of the bar. A song from the past that spoke of love, loss and a place where lights shone and everything would be all right drifted mournfully from the jukebox.

  *

  Moonlight bathed the room in a pale glow. The black-and-white framed prints and the straw hat with the red ribbon adorned the walls. He almost called out her name, but the distant cry of an infant pulled him into wakefulness. This room, the one he was really in, was dark, stark and minimalist, decorated to the tastes of his wife, who turned her head in her sleep, spreading her auburn hair across the white pillow.

  He padded to the cot at the end of the room and picked up his son, taking him into the lounge where they sat together in the darkness, the tiny child suckling contentedly at his bottle of milk while his father looked out at the stars, bright in the velvet sky.

  Callaghan had paid him a visit, just days after he’d saved his life. Daley had passed him the details of all the strange sights in the sky: the dates, times and locations. Callaghan hadn’t seemed particularly surprised to report that on the night Brian, Hamish and the fishermen had been buzzed in the boat, Aurora had been safe in its hangar on the air base near Machrie.

  ‘Lights in the sky, son. Lights in the sky,’ he whispered, a tear meandering down his cheek.

  A Note from the Author

  Dragon Alley

  The popular conviction that Europe left behind its taste for blood, brutality and genocide at the end of World War II is sadly mistaken. For those of us around at the time of the Bosnian conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the unfolding horror in a country that many had visited as a beautiful and historic holiday destination was almost unbelievable. Not only was this on our doorstep, it was playing out in full colour on our television screens every evening.

  There is not nearly enough space here to dwell on the political, religious and sectarian dynamics at the heart of this tra
gedy, but it is sobering to recall just a few of the dreadful statistics that emerged from only one city caught up in the war. Bosnian Serb forces besieged Sarajevo, an historic town in the newly formed state of Bosnia Herzegovina, intent on forcing the creation of Republika Srpska. Lasting from April 1992 until February 1996, the siege lasted for 1,425 days, three times longer than that of its infamous counterpart in Stalingrad, and, although accounts vary, it is generally acknowledged that almost 14,000 people lost their lives at this time, more than a third of them civilians.

  Ulica Zmaja od Bosne, or Dragon of Bosnia Street, the main boulevard in the city, became a shooting range for Bosnian Serb snipers preying upon the local populace, who were trying desperately to feed themselves and survive. Signs bearing the words ‘Pazi Snajper’ (‘Watch out – sniper’) became common. Assailants in the surrounding hills and tall buildings within the city murdered over 600 people, nearly half of them children, at random, using high-powered rifles, on that thoroughfare alone.

  Many of us, to this day, find it hard to remove the image from our minds of emaciated men being carted off in trucks to dig their own graves, before being shot through the head. It saddens the heart to realise that at the very moment I write these words and when you read them, similar atrocities are being perpetrated against humanity and the creatures with whom we share this planet.

  The Phoenicians

  Many years ago, during a boozy Hogmanay in Campbeltown, Gordon Campbell, a well-known local chemist (now sadly missed), foraged about in an oak bureau in his lounge and produced an old tin cigar box. Within lay a coin, tarnished silver in colour, with irregular edges and rudimentary markings. He went on to tell me the tale of how he had dug it up in the late 1960s in his garden in Tarbert, the beautiful fishing village at the very north of Kintyre. Recognising the find as something special, Gordon contacted the British Museum, to be told that the artefact was a Phoenician coin, dating back almost 3,000 years.