by Ian Rankin
Cafferty lifted the phone. ‘You’re a hard man to speak to,’ he said by way of greeting.
‘I’m a hard man full stop. What can I do for you, Morris?’
No one but his mother and a few school teachers had ever called Cafferty that; he suspected Maloney knew it, and used it to try to get a reaction from him.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Now why would you want to know that?’ The accent would always retain its soft Irish lilt, but there was gravel in there too. ‘Let’s just say I’m some place that requires a cold beer, and that beer’s getting warm as we speak.’
‘Stuart Bloom has turned up.’
‘Fighting fit, I trust.’
‘Dead in his car and wearing a set of handcuffs.’
‘Handcuffs? So the boys in blue did away with him after all.’ Cafferty stayed silent. ‘Ah, come on now, Morris. Are we still playing that game? I told you twenty dozen times I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Same as I told you it wasn’t me. Doesn’t mean one of us wasn’t lying.’
‘It’s history, Morris. Leave it to the coppers.’
‘They’re dusting off the original missing person case.’
‘And the best of Irish luck to them.’
‘We both get a mention.’
‘So bloody what?’ Maloney held the phone away from his face while he spoke to someone in what sounded like French. He was back a few seconds later. ‘You and me did well to stay out of that little skirmish – end of.’
‘Do you ever hear from your old friend Sir Adrian?’
‘Not in a long time.’
‘The story’s all over the media; you know what that means.’
‘It means we keep our heads down. Easier for me than you – I hear you came out of retirement.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’
‘Hotels is where you want to be, not bars. Plenty money sloshing around.’
‘Thanks for the advice.’
‘Morris, I’m telling you, there’s nothing to worry your pretty little head over. Everyone had an alibi that night, didn’t they?’
‘An alibi used to be an easy thing to arrange.’
‘You’re right about that. Bloody phones and CCTV these days, a man never knows who’s watching him. Here, do you still use a computer?’
‘On occasion.’
‘And that advice I gave you?’
Cafferty glanced at the notebook sitting open on his desk. ‘Sticky tape over the camera, don’t worry.’
‘Can’t be too careful. And remember: the only way to ensure your phone can’t be hacked is not to have a phone in the first place. Speaking of which, they’ve almost had enough time to trace this.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘I’d be here all day if I started. Take good care of yourself, Morris. We’re none of us getting any younger.’
The phone went dead. Number withheld, naturally. It had taken Cafferty five calls to get the message out that he wanted to speak. He wondered if Maloney had changed much from the stocky, bull-necked man he’d met. The demeanour had been cheery enough – the professional Irishman bit – but the eyes had remained serious as a stroke. Despite searching online, Cafferty hadn’t found any photos of the man taken less than five years ago. When they’d met at the hotel, there’d just been the two of them, Maloney’s two ‘associates’ waiting outside with Cafferty’s own man. Then again, Cafferty’s man had been an off-duty cop, so that evened things up a bit. There had been coffee and water and some biscuits and pastries, and a quiet chat about the feud between Brand and Ness, and how choosing sides might lead to ‘awkwardness’. Wasn’t it better to call a truce of sorts and focus on cooperation – Maloney and Cafferty seeking joint ventures rather than rivalry?
‘Anything in particular?’ Maloney had asked.
‘There’s a certain organisation in Aberdeen that’s ripe to be put out to pasture …’
And Maloney had smiled, indicating that he’d known all along this was where their talk would lead.
Not that much had come of it; Aberdeen had dug in too deep, and Maloney hadn’t liked it that there’d been bad drugs sold on Cafferty’s patch, meaning increased police surveillance. Cafferty had protested that the drugs hadn’t come from any of his guys, but it had been a hard story to sell to the Irishman. Either Cafferty bore the responsibility, or else he had competition in what was supposed to be a trade he controlled.
But there had been some dealings and exchanges with Maloney down the years, the two men remaining wary, never quite able to trust one another. One thing Cafferty felt confident about was that if Maloney had sensed the private eye as a threat, he wouldn’t have blinked. And Bloom had begun to pose a threat, no doubt about that. His own reading at the time was that Bloom had been put under lock and key, maybe a safe house in Ireland – plenty of those left over from the Troubles. He’d be let go once the hint had been taken by Jackie Ness.
But no release had come.
And without a further face-to-face with Maloney, there was no way to know.
19
‘I managed to condense it to thirty sheets of A4,’ DC Christine Esson said as Clarke walked into the CID office in Gayfield Square. ‘If you want more, I’ll have to rustle everything up from storage. Mind telling me why it’s suddenly bugging you?’
The office was small, just the four desks, one of them permanently vacant. Through the door was the even smaller inner sanctum belonging to DCI James Page. Clarke turned from that door to Esson.
‘He’s in a meeting at the Big House.’
‘Which one?’
‘Fettes.’
‘I thought we’d stopped calling it that.’ Clarke picked up the large manila envelope and eased the printed sheets from it. ‘Where’s Ronnie?’
‘Called in sick.’
‘You’re home alone?’
‘And somehow still managing to survive.’
Clarke sat down at her own desk, ignoring the pile of messages waiting there for her, the files rising to half the height of her computer.
‘The last three days?’ she complained.
‘That’s what happens if you’re not here to flush it away.’
‘A lovely image, thanks, Christine.’
‘Any more flak from ACU?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Meaning?’
Clarke looked up at her colleague. ‘I’m just going to read this lot, if that’s okay. Maybe chat later?’
Esson made a face and got back to work.
Ellis Meikle, aged seventeen, had been found guilty of the murder of his girlfriend. Her name was Kristen Halliday. They’d been an item since high school. Ellis had left at sixteen, no job, no prospects. Kristen had stayed on. Their social groups had begun to diverge. There were shouting matches, fuelled by cheap drink and whatever drugs were available.
Kristen had gone missing on a Wednesday afternoon. That night, her parents had turned up at the house Ellis shared with his mother and uncle. Kristen wasn’t answering her phone. Had Ellis seen her? He had shaken his head, seemingly irritated at being dragged from his computer game. His mother and uncle had been drinking. The uncle wanted to round up a search party. Kristen’s father said it wasn’t his call to make. Tempers had flared. Kristen’s mother wanted to phone the police. But Kristen had only been absent a few hours – nobody thought the police would be interested. They’d started ringing round her friends instead. One said that Kristen had been headed to the golf course to meet Ellis. Ellis was asked again: had he seen Kristen? Kristen’s mother had made a lurch towards him, physically restrained by Ellis’s mother, who had then been grabbed by Kristen’s father, which brought the uncle back into the melee. The neighbours, alerted by all the noise, had started to arrive.
Things calmed down and a further bottle of vodka was opene
d. More phone calls, friends’ doors knocked on. Just after dawn, a dog-walker had found the body on the golf course. Kristen lay in a bunker, lazily hidden beneath scooped sand, a single knife wound to her neck the cause of death. The police search team turned up the weapon sixteen hours later, in a patch of rough on a route leading from the bunker to the main road. It was an ordinary kitchen knife, four-inch blade, not particularly sharp. The wound was deep; it would have taken force, taken a certain rage.
The fingerprints on the handle were a match for Ellis Meikle. The last text received on Kristen’s phone had been from Ellis, wanting her to meet him at the golf course.
The initial interviews were handled with sensitivity – Clarke knew because she’d been in attendance at three of them. It was her case. Her and Esson and Ronnie Ogilvie. The forensics were irrefutable: Kristen’s blood on the knife and Meikle’s prints. One thing they couldn’t prove was where the knife had come from. Uncle Dallas was adamant none were missing from the kitchen in Restalrig. And how could he be so sure? Because he lived in the house, the house his brother Charles had moved out of, the house Ellis and his mother Seona shared. Charles Meikle meantime had got himself a flat in Causewayside, his daughter Billie going with him. Had the break-up been amicable? It had, mostly. No one was talking about a divorce. They’d asked the kids who wanted to stay with who, and the kids had made up their own minds. Uncle Dallas had then begun calling round, and had eventually started staying over. He slept on the sofa apparently, Billie reluctant to let him have her room, even though it was vacant.
No funny business between Seona and her brother-in-law? The one time DC Ronnie Ogilvie had raised the notion with Uncle Dallas, they’d almost had to set phasers to stun. Dallas Meikle was ex-army; diagnosed with PTSD after a spell in Afghanistan. Electricity crackled just below his surface.
‘You tried to organise a search?’ Clarke had asked him.
‘Ellis’s lass was missing, of course I did.’
‘It didn’t strike you as odd that Ellis himself seemed quite relaxed?’
‘We deal with stress in different ways – one thing I learned after the army.’ He had run a hand down the tattoos on his neck. Clarke wondered if it was a tell of some kind, but she couldn’t be sure.
The procurator fiscal’s office saw nothing complex in the case. The source of the knife wasn’t germane. The lack of blood on Ellis Meikle’s clothing and shoes just meant he’d disposed of the ones he’d been wearing.
‘He made a better job of it than he did with the knife,’ Clarke had commented in one meeting, her words met with silence.
Trial. Guilty verdict. Murder rather than culpable homicide, though the defence counsel had pushed hard for the latter, love being a kind of madness, a rash act in the heat of a heightened moment.
No youth incarceration for Ellis Meikle – straight to HM Prison Edinburgh, meaning Saughton, not far from the Hearts ground where his dad had taken him to fortnightly football games, a tradition carried on since the separation.
Seona Meikle in tears as the trial ended. Dallas in a black leather waistcoat wrapping a protective arm around her, while her husband comforted their dumbstruck daughter. Clarke had bought the drinks for her team that evening. DCI Page had added fifty quid to the pot, meaning for them to have a meal, but in the end they’d made do with nachos – and a few more rounds of drinks.
What else were they supposed to do, sit in silence, their thoughts on the Halliday family and the Meikles? Plenty more work would be waiting for them the next morning. Ellis Meikle and the other players in the drama could be filed away and forgotten.
Now, seated at her desk in Gayfield Square, Clarke wondered about that. You couldn’t let cases get to you. Yes, you had to treat everyone as a fellow human being, but you had to draw the line, not dwell on the suffering, the repercussions. You wouldn’t be able to do the job otherwise. She’d seen colleagues weep on occasion – of course she had – and she’d seen them frustrated when a result failed to materialise. But you had to move on. You had to.
But that wasn’t always what the families did.
There were copies of photos among the pages, and Clarke studied them. Ellis and Kristen together, shot with a phone at a party. Kristen sitting down to Christmas dinner with her family. Clarke remembered her parents, but had forgotten their names. Quietly distraught, shunning Dallas Meikle when he approached them outside the courtroom. More photos: the bunker, body in situ; the discarded knife; Ellis’s cramped bedroom, its walls covered in posters advertising computer games; various items of his clothing.
No blood.
He had stayed silent throughout the majority of the interviews, answering ‘yes’ when asked if he’d done it. He wouldn’t say why, wouldn’t answer any of their other questions. Christine Esson got him talking about Scottish football, but hit a wall when she tried changing the subject.
When Clarke looked up from the file, Esson herself was standing there, arms folded, a defiant look on her face.
‘Tell me,’ she demanded.
‘Ellis’s uncle has been hassling me.’
‘Hassling you how?’
‘Phone calls for one thing.’
‘What does he say?’
‘Nothing – the phone goes dead every time I answer.’
‘You sure it’s him?’
‘As near as can be. He works behind the bar at McKenzie’s. It’s across the street from the phone boxes where the calls originate.’ Clarke offered a shrug. ‘There was a car outside my flat, too. And stuff scrawled on the tenement door.’
‘Make of car? Registration?’
‘I’m a hopeless detective.’
‘And you’ve not spoken to him?’
‘I will. I just wanted to refresh my memory first.’ She picked up the paperwork and let it fall again on to the desk.
‘Families are never thrilled when you lock up their loved ones. Nephew and uncle were pretty close, as I recall.’
‘The trial ended two months ago, though. Why’s it taken him so long?’
‘He’s been festering?’ Esson offered. ‘Why did you give him your phone number?’
‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t.’
‘You gave it to Seona, then?’
Clarke was shaking her head. ‘I don’t think so. More than likely I handed a card to Kristen’s parents, but I can’t see them passing it on to Ellis’s uncle.’
‘Probably not,’ Esson agreed. ‘Want me to come with you?’
‘To see Dallas Meikle?’ Clarke shook her head again. ‘I think I can handle it.’
‘Doesn’t he have certain anger management issues?’
‘I can handle it,’ Clarke repeated with a little more force. ‘Thanks for this, though.’ She pressed a hand against the paperwork.
‘At least it’s a break from the body in the woods, eh?’
‘Definitely,’ Clarke agreed, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.
‘You don’t need to go see him, you know. You could just report it.’
‘I could.’
‘But you’d rather do it all by yourself? That’s a bad habit you’ve picked up, Siobhan – almost as if your old sparring partner is still at your shoulder.’
‘John’s been retired a long time, Christine.’
‘So how come I still feel his presence?’ Esson’s eyes were drilling into Clarke’s. ‘How long since you last saw him?’ she enquired.
Clarke thought for a moment, then checked her wristwatch.
‘Thought so,’ Esson said, returning to her desk with a weary shake of her head.
20
Harthill service station, just off the M8, almost equidistant between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Only time Rebus had used it was when visiting the nearby Shotts prison. He stayed on the access road, ignoring the petrol pumps and parking bays, and pulled in behind the black Audi. As he
got out, he could hear the motorway traffic. There was an artic parked up not far away, its driver checking the tyres. Rebus stood beside the Audi. Steele was in the driver’s seat, Edwards in the rear. They obviously wanted Rebus in the passenger seat but he slid in next to Edwards instead. That way he could keep an eye on both ACU officers.
‘Relax, John,’ Steele told him, ‘this isn’t Goodfellas.’ His window had been lowered a couple of inches so he could flick ash from his cigarette out of it.
‘It’s been a while, Brian.’
‘Thought we’d leave you in peace, now you’re retired.’ Steele met Rebus’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘At least, I thought you’d retired. But you seem to hang around like the same bad smell.’
‘Speaking of which, any chance of lowering that window a bit more?’
‘You given up the coffin nails, John? Grant told me you had but I found it hard to believe.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Rebus saw that Edwards was smiling, not that that meant anything. Meantime, to make a point, Steele closed the window and kept smoking.
‘I’ve got to ask,’ Rebus said. ‘When they culled CCU and rebranded it, how did you two manage to survive?’
‘Aye, it was an ugly time,’ Steele responded. ‘All the complaints against CCU were made anonymously. Anonymously, John. Cowardly bastards wouldn’t even put their heads above the parapet. Cops grassing up cops is ugly. We’re supposed to be kin.’
‘You didn’t maybe join in, just to save your skins?’
Steele gave the slightest of snorts. ‘Think what you want to think, John. All that matters is we’re still standing.’
‘You’re quoting Elton John at me?’
‘Thought it was apt – I hear Deborah Quant calls your prick “Tiny Dancer”.’
There was a wheeze of laughter from Edwards. Rebus turned his head to face him. ‘The only wee dancer around here is that brain cell of yours, birling around with no one to partner it.’