All the Devils

by Neil Broadfoot

  But no. No. It would be his death sentence, he knew that. Better just to do as he was asked, take the money and keep quiet.

  After all, he had made a deal with the Devil. And there was no way out now.

  6

  Susie stood in the shower, the water just this side of scalding, inhaling the steam and the smell of soap and shampoo as if it could clean her on the inside as well as the out.

  After leaving Doug, she had come back to her flat on Broughton Road, but found the four walls a prison she couldn’t bear. So she had slipped on her running gear and headed out, pounding the deserted streets. Usually, the steady rhythm of her feet slapping on the pavement and the burn of her muscles helped to calm and refocus her. But this time she was unable to outrun the thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her, the music blaring in her ears from her iPod unable to drown out the whispering accusations and jibes she remembered all too well.

  She had met Redmonds at the old Lothian and Borders CID Christmas party, which was held in a Glasgow hotel so nobody “shit on their own doorstep”. Having only recently transferred from Stirling, it wasn’t long before Susie found herself alone at the bar, watching the party unfold in front of her as the officers drifted off into tight groups and cliques. Soon enough, Redmonds had sidled up to her and the combination of loneliness and booze made what happened next inevitable.

  She felt a burning in her cheeks that was nothing to do with the heat from the shower as the night came back to her in snatches; his hand resting on hers at the bar, his soft, almost embarrassed explanation that his wife had told him it was over and the divorce was just an inevitability. The fumbling that started as soon as the lift doors slid shut, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth, his hands rough on her breasts as the room door swung shut. His insistence about putting a porn movie on in the background as he fucked her, his technique all about trying to get her to give him a blowjob before descending into frantic thrusts and heavy-handed caresses, mercifully building quickly to an orgasm that had him panting like a bull in her ear.

  They had ordered a bottle of champagne and Susie had most of it, passing out after they fucked a second time, more at her insistence than his as she tried, and failed, to glean some sliver of pleasure from the evening. She remembered the awkward conversation the next morning, the stilted silence and guilty smiles as he gathered his clothes and slipped from her room back to his own.

  The rumours had started almost immediately; that Redmonds had got lucky at the office party with a young officer who hadn’t long transferred in to Lothian and Borders. And with the rumours came the innuendos, sneering asides and the practical jokes – including a morning-after pill left on her desk – as her fellow police officers revelled in the chance to let their inner school bully out to play for a little while. The worst of it came from those who knew Redmonds’ wife, Alicia, who was also an Assistant Chief Super in Perth at the time. There were hard glances in the bathrooms, conversations that went silent as she passed tables in the canteen at Fettes, the disgusted sniffs at the marriage wrecker who had cost Alicia her happiness. It was, Susie thought, typical. The husband was the unfaithful shithead, but it was the other woman who took the shit.

  The situation got worse when she took a call from Doug McGregor, who had just been made the crime reporter at the Capital Tribune. She had agreed to meet him at a café on Broughton Road, fully prepared to tell him to go fuck himself then go and hand her notice in. But Doug had surprised her. Instead of pushing her for a comment, he told her he wasn’t going to run the story. She had suspected blackmail – that he was going to try and make her his source – but he waved this aside. He wanted an introduction, nothing more.

  As time passed, she was forced to admit that Doug was a useful route into the press and a way of getting information from sources that would never speak to the police. The story had died away and, despite the lingering reputation as “the girl who fucked the Super”, Susie got on with her job, working some hard cases and doing good work.

  Until now.

  Now the rumour mill would grind into life again. All the old allegations and smears coming to light. Doug had tried to reassure her that she wouldn’t be named: he was the only reporter who knew she had slept with Redmonds and he wasn’t about to release her name, and if anyone else did it would only be a footnote in a much bigger and bloodier story. “Sex sells, Susie,” he had told her as he topped up her whisky, “but not as much as a nasty cop murder. Trust me, you’re not going to be the story in any of this.”

  But he was wrong, she knew it. She knew what police officers were like. Burns had called to warn her, to give her time to prepare for what she would face in the office. And she would face it. She was damned if she would let those bastards see her upset because of a drunken mistake she had made years before.

  She stepped from the shower, wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at herself. Forced her eyes to harden, the doubt and the fear retreating into the dark of her pupils. She nodded slightly and wrapped a towel around her. Let them whisper. Let them gossip. Let them play their jokes. This was all they would get in return. DS Susie Drummond. Professional. Controlled. Competent.

  And if they had a problem with that, they would see exactly how professional she could be.

  7

  Doug sat squinting at his laptop, crunching painkillers between his teeth as he flexed his arm and tried to ease the ache that ran from his elbow to the tips of his fingers. It was always worse after sitting at the laptop, arms held at forty-five degrees as he typed.

  His eyes drifted to the whisky on the coffee table, poured but untouched. He considered it for a moment, then forced his concentration back to the article he had been working on. After speaking to Becky – a version of her name he suddenly realised only he used – he had started to work up the story as he would any other. Not because he was going to actually send it to his editor, Walter McKay, but more for something to distract him from the torture of waiting to call her back and find out what the pathologist had learned.

  He skimmed the copy again, wondering what he was reading – another crime story or his own obituary? Either way it would never run, he could never put the Tribune in the position of running copy on a killing that he was either directly responsible for or a key player in.

  The thought roused the panic in him again, cold fingers spreading through his guts. He would explain to Becky, Susie and Walter, then hand himself in. Not to Susie – he couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that to her. And not to her prick of a boss, Burns – he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. But Susie had said good things about DC Eddie King recently, found him to be developing into a good detective and, more importantly, someone she could trust.

  The man who would be King, he thought bitterly. Wouldn’t do his career any harm, arresting the man who had murdered a former Assistant Chief Superintendent.

  Doug reached for the glass, the thoughts of Redmonds’ grunt and moans filling his mind. The pleas for mercy, the sneering aside about Susie…

  I know her better than you.

  He had deserved it, yes, but had he really killed him? He was able to drive himself home. But had he been dying as he drove, the effects from Doug’s kicks turning his body into a timebomb?

  …timebomb…

  He looked at the flash drive on the coffee table, inches from the glass Susie had drained before leaving. What should he do with it? Technically, it was evidence – even, he was forced to admit, motive. And it should be handed in, along with Redmonds’ laptop. But could he do that?

  He raised the glass to his lips, closed his eyes. Felt the tears threaten again, forced them down. He slammed the glass back onto the table, hard enough for whisky to splash onto his hand, glanced at the clock on the laptop screen. 6.09am, not quite an hour since he had called Becky and tried to get some sense of what was going on.

  And why was he doing that? To convince himself he wasn’t a killer
, or to start constructing an alibi? Not that there was any point: they would trace the call Redmonds made to him soon enough. Whatever way he looked at it, he was…

  guilty

  …implicated.

  Hand shaking, he hit Redial and clamped the phone to his ear. The ringing was a drill in his ear, grating, and he felt adrenalin course through him, a freezing, rising terror that wrapped itself around him and started to squeeze. He suddenly felt cold, clammy, his breathing becoming ragged and shallow. It was no use, he was going to lose it, to scream out, explode from the couch, throw the laptop across the room, run for the…

  “Doug.” Becky’s voice was heavy with exhaustion and tight with irritation. “Your watch is running fast again, that’s not been an hour yet. What, you couldn’t wait to talk to me?”

  He took a deep breath, opened his eyes. Roughly pushed the laptop from his knee, surged to his feet, galvanised by the sudden urge to move.

  “Becky, sorry, you know what I’m like when I’m on a splash, get carried away. Any word from Williams?”

  “Are you okay, Doug?” The tension in Rebecca’s voice eased, replaced by confused concern. “You still don’t sound yourself. Is your hand really bad tonight?”

  He bit back a sudden, almost hysterical compulsion to laugh. Yes, that was it. His hand was the only problem he had right now. Lucky him. Thought instead of Redmonds lying on the street in front of him, felt the laughter die away.

  “I’m fine, Becky, really. But I’d be better if you had anything to tell me.”

  She sighed in exasperation, and Doug knew she was collecting her thoughts. The delay was torture. He stared down at the glass of whisky, hard, thought about knocking it back in one gulp. Maybe it would help. Couldn’t hurt. He was starting to lean forward when Rebecca spoke, freezing him.

  “Yes, we’ve heard from Williams, got the preliminaries in. But I’m not sure I should give you anything before the presser at eleven, Doug. The Chief has this strictly embargoed before then – he’d have my arse in a sling if you ran it in the first edition before that.”

  “Off the record, totally,” he said, amazed by the calm, measured tone in his voice. “Purely to prep me. I’ll write it up for second, have the drop on the rest of the press pack but won’t deviate from your script. It’ll just mean we can update the website faster than anyone else.”

  She sighed again. “You promise me, Doug? This cannot go anywhere before the presser. Clear?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, the word falling from his mouth like a boulder.

  “Okay.”

  He heard the shuffling of papers on the other end of the line, Becky’s voice growing softer and more guarded as she spoke. In a police station, it always paid to talk in whispers.

  “As you know, Redmonds was found by the duty Detective Sergeant who was called to the scene in Trinity in the early hours. On entering the property, he found Redmonds in the living room, badly beaten –”

  “Did he die from the beating?” Doug interrupted, lips numb, heart pounding. His T-shirt was sticking to his back and he was shivering as though he had just plunged into an ice bath.

  “I was getting to that,” Rebecca snapped, impatience raw in her voice. “When he first saw the body, Williams initially thought cause of death would be some kind of internal injury. He was a mess, Doug, bruised everywhere. Three cracked ribs, broken jaw and nose, wrist shattered – that was probably a defensive wound, according to Williams.”

  Doug felt tears start to slip down his cheeks. Jesus, he had killed him. He had really done it. He was a killer, a murderer, a…

  “Doug? You still there?”

  He pawed angrily at his face with his free hand. “Yeah, sorry Becky, just taking notes. What did you say?”

  “I said it was an internal injury that killed him, but not directly resulting from the bare-handed beating he took. Williams didn’t spot it until he stripped the body and cleaned him up, but there was a stab wound about an inch above the belly button. Something thin and very sharp, he said. When he opened Redmonds up, he found the chest cavity was filled with blood. Whatever he was stabbed with, it hit his…” – she paused, tone changing as she read from Williams’ notes – “ah, inferior vena cava. Caused internal bleeding. That’s what killed him.”

  Doug felt as though all the air had been sucked from the room and he was in a vacuum. His blood roared through his ears, vision doubling as he started to sob. He gulped for air, forced himself to focus. Transferred the phone to his other hand and flexed his left, using the massive bolt of pain to clear his thoughts.

  “So,” he said slowly, not quite trusting his voice yet, “you’re saying that cause of death was stabbing?”

  “Yes,” Rebecca said patiently. “Seems he was beaten, then stabbed, then drove himself home, bleeding internally. Explains why he crashed into the dividing wall between his house and his neighbours; Williams says that with that level of blood loss, he would have been drifting in and out of consciousness as he drove.”

  “How long would it have taken for the stab wound to kill him?” Doug asked, feeling like a spectator in his own body.

  “Come on, Doug,” Rebecca said in a you-know-better tone. “You know how Williams hates to guess. All he could say is that, with wounds like this, the victim can stay conscious for between ten and thirty minutes.”

  Doug nodded. Found he didn’t know what else to say. Fell back on instinct, playing the role he was meant to. “And you’re going to be releasing all this at the press conference at eleven?”

  “Everything apart from how long between the injury being inflicted and him dying. Body’s been formally identified by his ex-wife, Williams’ report will be finalised soon. But I mean it, Doug, not a whisper of this makes it into first edition. Clear?”

  “Clear,” he murmured. He felt as though the volume was being turned down on her now, replaced by the clamouring static of questions in his mind.

  “Good. So I’ll see you at eleven. And Doug?”

  “Yes?”

  “You definitely owe me that weekend for this.”

  He gave a laugh that grated in his ears and finished the call. Held the phone for a moment longer then let it drop to the floor as the sobbing turned into spasms that shook him to his core. He doubled over, chest touching his knees, tears darkening the rug between his feet. He tried to slow his thoughts, stop thinking for just one moment, but found he couldn’t.

  He wasn’t a killer. He hadn’t caused Redmonds’ death. Someone else had. But who? And why? He had seen Redmonds around two, the call from his neighbour had come in at almost 4am. So a two-hour gap between Doug leaving Redmonds and his death. Where had he gone? Who had he seen in those two hours? And why had he been stabbed?

  Doug straightened up slowly, looking at the items on the coffee table. Whisky, the flash drive, Redmonds’ laptop in its bag.

  He reached for the whisky then brought his own laptop to his knees. Thought. Time. He needed time. He was implicated in this, but he wasn’t the killer. Did they know about the flash drive? The laptop? Or was Redmonds killed because of his possible links to Dessie Banks?

  He needed to know. And he couldn’t find any of that out if he just handed himself in and told Eddie King the whole story. There was still the call from Redmonds’ phone to his, but he would deal with that later. For now, he needed answers.

  He swallowed the whisky in one gulp, grimacing as it burned his throat. Skimmed the copy one more time then hit Send. Felt a momentary twinge of guilt at putting the Tribune and Walter in the position he was, brushed it aside. “Prime suspect in murder writes his own splash,” he muttered.

  Guilt. He could worry about guilt, and the fact that he had just ended his career, later. For now, he needed to know what was going on. And that, he realised with a shiver of disgust, would mean searching the flash drive and Redmonds’ laptop for whatever else they contained
. Redmonds’ voice in his mind now, heavy with arrogance and hatred: You’re not going to write a word, McGregor. Because if you do, this goes online. Now that would be a story, wouldn’t it?

  Pouring another whisky, Doug reached for the laptop bag and got to work.

  8

  The coffee was strong and black, the slightly bitter aroma curling around his nostrils as he took his first sip and leaned back in his chair. He looked out of the window, a thin patina of rain across the glass making the trees indistinct smears of green below a morning sky that was already smothering the sun and staining the light a dull, industrial grey.

  He glanced back at the monitor on the desk in front of him, the first news of the murder already on many of the news websites. But while the mainstream outlets, the BBC, PA, the Capital Tribune and the rest of them restricted their coverage to the established facts, “citizen journalists” had already taken to social media, boiling rumour, innuendo and supposition down into 140-character statements of absolute fact. The reports ranged from a drugs feud gone wrong to a gay tryst turning violent when the wife walked in on Redmonds and her husband. He smiled at that, wished he could show it to Redmonds himself and enjoy the bastard’s discomfort.

  He had always known that involving Redmonds was a mistake. The guiding principle had always been discretion, restraint. But Redmonds had a different agenda. He was flashy, bombastic, overbearing in his desires and his ambitions. But, ultimately, a coward. That much was plain from his reaction to the pressure the reporter McGregor put on him in the wake of the Falcon’s Rest raid. And for what? McGregor had nothing. If Redmonds had kept his mouth shut, McGregor would still have nothing. And Redmonds would still be alive. For now, anyway.

  He had known Redmonds was an indulgence too far, an untidy loose end that would have to be dealt with, decisively, one day. At least he had McGregor to thank for that – Redmonds’ course of action and McGregor’s reaction had been unexpected, but it had provided the perfect opportunity to deal with Redmonds once and for all.