Doug leaned back in the couch opposite her, coffee cradled to his chest. The quiet in the flat felt charged, oppressive, as if saying the wrong word or asking the wrong question would reignite the fury and pain and guilt that had raged through the place less than a hour ago. The simple answer was, he didn’t know. He hadn’t thought that far ahead, had only focused on telling Susie what had happened. But now, here they were, drinking the coffee she had insisted on making, discussing next steps. It was so surreal it gave him a vague case of vertigo.
“I’m not sure,” he said, sitting up straighter. He spotted the bottle of whisky on the coffee table, imagined pouring a heavy jolt into his coffee.
Susie broke her gaze on him long enough to take a sip of coffee then returned it straight to him. There was anger and hurt in those red-rimmed eyes, but again Doug had the feeling she was looking for something he didn’t understand. More than just an answer to her question but… what?
He shrugged, surrendering to the inevitability that she was going to wait him out until he said something. “Okay, let’s look at the options. The best thing, from a procedural point of view, would be for you to caution me right now. Tell Burns what I told you, hand over the flash drive and Redmonds’ laptop as evidence. I’ll give a statement, and we’ll see what happens. But I don’t need to tell you what that means.”
He watched Susie’s knuckles flush white as she gripped the mug tighter. “It would mean that” – she nodded to the closed laptop in front of her – “becoming public knowledge. From Burns to forensics to any other fucker who fancied a sneaky look.” She closed her eyes, crushed the coffee mug into her forehead. “Jesus fuck.”
Doug nodded. “So that’s option one out. Which leaves us with only one other option.”
“Which is?” Susie asked. She already knew, but wasn’t sure if she wanted Doug to articulate it. If he did, it would be real. A choice to be made. One that would change everything.
Doug leaned forward, reaching for the whisky. Saw Susie’s expression harden, let his hand fall short. “The only other thing we can do is keep this to ourselves. Try to figure out whatever the fuck is going on and see if we can keep you and that picture out of it.”
“But what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know yet,” Doug said. “But it’s definitely tied to that flash drive, Redmonds’ laptop, or both. If this had been just a case of Redmonds trying to get me to back off, then why would someone suddenly decide to burgle my flat?”
He gestured to the TV on the wall, the stereo on the bookshelf. “And they weren’t very good burglars, were they? No, whoever broke in here knew what they were doing, and knew what they were looking for. The only new things that have been in this flat in the last month are the laptop and the flash drive. And since Redmonds used a burner to call me that night, he was obviously trying to hide something from someone. We find them, we find some answers.”
“But how do we do that?” Susie asked. “You’ve said there’s nothing else on the flash drive, or Redmonds’ laptop. And since I’m not going to call this in,” – she grimaced, the idea obviously repellent to her – “we can’t get forensics to pick this place apart to see if there are any traces of whoever broke in. So what have we got? An empty laptop and a revenge porn pic of me. How does that help?”
Doug considered. Susie wasn’t going to like this, but it wouldn’t be the first bad news he’d given her today. “I said there’s nothing on the flash drive or laptop that I can see, but I’m not a computer expert. We need someone who is. To have a look at them, see if I’ve missed anything.”
Her head darted up, eyes locking with Doug’s. He saw tears threaten again, held back only by the cold fury and shame in her eyes. “Doug, no, I can’t, I mean, I…”
Doug reached again for the whisky. Fuck it. “It’s okay,” he said. “I know someone who can help, who we can trust.” He gave a small smile. “And I can guarantee you he’s not going to care what you look like in that picture.”
He regretted what he’d said the moment he saw the agony collapse Susie’s face. Put the mug down, held his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. Poor choice of words. But Colin’s a good guy, Susie, we can trust him and he’ll make sure this doesn’t go any further.”
“Colin?” Susie whispered, running the name through her head. “Colin? You mean Colin Damon, Hal’s husband? How can he help with this?”
“He’s a graphic designer,” Doug said, “but he’s also a tech geek. Spends a lot of his time building websites for clients, writing code and scripts to make things work. He’s helped me on a story or two in the past, tracking down URLs for shell companies and the like. He’s good, Susie. And we can trust him. And Hal.”
Susie thought for a moment. Doug had been friends with Hal for a while now and he’d introduced her to Hal, his husband, Colin, and their three-year-old daughter, Jennifer. They were a sickeningly perfect family, she thought, content and happy, although just a little too eager to push Doug and Susie together.
“You sure we can trust them?” she asked.
“Absolutely. And we need answers, Susie. We’re in the dark here.”
“Speaking of in the dark, are you going to tell Rebecca about this?”
Doug looked away, reached for his mug again. He had expected that Becky would find out when Susie dragged him in front of Burns. But instead, here they were, effectively concocting a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. And why? He’d said it himself. I was only thinking of you, Susie.
“No,” he said finally. “This is between us. When we know what the hell is going on, I’ll tell Becky at the same time you tell Burns. Until then…”
“What?” Susie asked, relief coursing through her as something else squeezed at her chest.
“We do what we normally do,” he said. “You grab Eddie, look into the Leith body. The beating isn’t connected to the shit-kicking I gave Redmonds, you know that now. So someone else did it. So you have to find them. Burns didn’t want you anywhere near the Redmonds case anyway, so this will keep you off his radar and in his good books. Meanwhile, I’ll look into this with Hal and Colin, and write up the Leith story as it develops.”
Susie felt disbelief wash over her. The more they spoke about this, the more insane it seemed. The two of them, working together secretly under the noses of Burns and the entire senior brass of Police Scotland, hoping to find something that would save their arses. It was ridiculous, preposterous, insane.
Yeah, she thought, as insane as some cheap fuck taking a nude pic of you when you’re passed out.
“Okay,” she sighed, feeling the urge to just lunge forward and smash up the flash drive and the laptop. Knew it was futile. “But, Doug, if we’re going to do this, you need to do one thing for me.”
He looked at her, mug halfway to his lips, confusion etched across his face. She took him in then, the over-prominent cheeks, the dull grey skin, black rings under his eyes, hair raked up into even more expressionistic shapes than normal. Thought back to that first night in the hospital after he had been attacked by Diane Pearson, how small and fragile he had looked in the bed, his arm in a cast. He looked worse now.
“What?” he asked.
“Put the mug down, get rid of the bottle. If we’re going to do this, I need you, not the booze-soaked, self-pitying twat you’ve become since the Pearson case.”
He stared at her, jaw falling open. She saw his eyes dart between her and the bottle, colour racing into his cheeks. After a moment, he placed the mug on the coffee table, pushed it away. Bunched his left hand into a fist, wincing as he did. She saw his eyes dart around as memories scudded across his mind. She wondered what he was seeing, felt a surge of pity for him, the sudden urge to put an arm around him. After everything that had happened, nightmares were something Doug McGregor would never be short of.
“It just fucking hurts, Susie,” he whispered finally, not looking a
t her.
She stared at him, letting the statement hang in the air. Waited for him to raise his eyes to meet hers then nodded softly.
He was right. It did fucking hurt. Both of them.
25
After finishing the interview with the Leonards, Burns told Eddie to drive them to a small hotel and gastro pub he knew that was only ten minutes away on the road to Wallyford. The hotel itself looked like a beefed-up version of the houses they had seen in the Leonards’ estate, with an added tower and ivy crawling lazily up the granite walls. The restaurant was at the back, designed to blend in as well as a go-kart in a Formula One race. They got a table in the back of the restaurant, which gave them a scenic view of the kids’ play area. Burns hated seeing play areas in the rain. They always depressed him.
They ordered meals, Burns noting that King’s selection matched his almost exactly in price, then sat back and waited. Eddie broke the silence first.
“So, boss, what do you think?”
“I think you should stop calling me boss for a start,” Burns said, not taking his eyes from the play area. There was something about it, something triggering a thought in his mind, a vague memory that dissolved like a half-remembered dream. He pushed the thought away, concentrated on his notebook on the table, pleased to see that Eddie had been as thorough with his note-taking as he had been. Maybe the kid wasn’t a total loss, after all. He had kept his mouth shut and his ears open. Vital skills for a copper.
“What did you make of them?” Burns asked.
Eddie shifted in his seat, eased his tie down and his collar away from his neck, which was starting to look angry with razor burn. “Not sure, bo… sir. It’s obvious they’re loaded and, if what Mrs Leonard said is true, then neither she nor her husband would have any motive or desire to see Redmonds hurt.”
“But?” Burns asked, sensing there was something Eddie wasn’t saying.
“Nothing really, sir,” Eddie said, glancing between his notes and Burns nervously. “It’s just that when you asked Mrs Leonard about the last time she’d seen Redmonds, at the party for…” – he paused, flicking through his notes – “a former officer called John Wallace, she seemed a bit hacked off when you pushed her on whether she had spoken to Redmonds that night or not. Might be nothing – after all, she sits on the Board, isn’t used to having mere grunts like us asking questions – but still, seemed a little out of sorts to me.”
Burns nodded approvingly. He also remembered the sharpness in Alicia Leonard’s tone when he had pushed the point with her. Which led him to another thought. Something Paul Leonard had said: He was quite aggressive in the divorce settlement, I understand. That kind of fight leaves wounds.
It backed up what she had said about not wanting to talk to Redmonds, but it begged another question: how deep did those wounds run?
“…you want me to check up on, sir?”
“Sorry, Eddie?” Burns said, dragged back from his thoughts.
“I asked if there was something from the interview you wanted me to check up on?”
Burns shook his head, looked down at his own notes – and the scribbled instructions he had left for himself. “No, thanks, Eddie. As you said, she’s got no motive for this. Why go to the bother of killing an odious ex when you’re sitting pretty with a new husband, a high-profile place on the Police Board and more money than you can spend on Botox?” He saw Eddie smile at that, hoped he had the sense to keep the joke to himself. “No, we’ve done our duty, assured her that the investigation is ongoing and played nice so the Chief doesn’t rain shit down on us from a great height when he arrives later on.”
“So what can I do?” Eddie asked, trying, and failing to mask his disappointment. His earlier nerves were gone, replaced by that puppy-dog enthusiasm to get to work, help his boss.
“You,” Burns said as he leant away from the table, letting the waiter place their lunches in front of them, “can write up your take on the interview and send it to me. But later. Once we’re done here, you’re going to find DS Drummond and help her with the body found in Leith this morning.”
Pleasure and disappointment skittered across Eddie’s face, the resulting expression almost comical. Burns understood. Eddie liked working with Susie, and by all accounts they had the makings of a good team. But the office gossip told him she was damaged goods, especially at the moment, which could reflect badly on him and his career prospects. Good observational skills and an awareness of office politics, Burns thought, this kid might just go places, after all.
They ate mostly in silence, exchanging the odd pleasantry, and when they finished Eddie headed for the toilets, leaving Burns to look back over his notes. When he got to the last page, he read over his reminders to himself:
Check in with John Wallace re leaving do.
Redmonds – money worries etc?
Thought for a moment. Remembered again what Paul Leonard had said about wounds. Added another item to his list: Check divorce papers. Grounds? Circled the note and drew an arrow from it down a couple of lines. Wrote the word Quietly and underlined it three times.
It was probably a waste of time, but if there was a straw to be clutched, he would take it. So Redmonds was a bastard, fine, that meant he could have invited the kicking he got. But the savagery of it bothered Burns. As he said to Alicia Leonard, it felt personal, as if Redmonds was being punished for some kind of insult or outrage. Which was why the cause of death bothered him. A single stab wound from a long, thin and incredibly sharp, bladed instrument. It seemed almost cold, clinical, compared to the savagery of the beating.
He stared out at the abandoned play area, watched the swings moving gently in the wind, the rain pooling at the bottom of the dull silver slide. Felt the niggle at the back of his mind again, a picture that refused to develop.
26
The call was as unexpected as it was welcome, injecting what was proving to be a wearisome day with the almost irresistible chance to vent his frustrations. If he believed in such things, James would have almost thought it was fate smiling on him, rewarding him for his work so far.
He sat now, considering the phone he had just placed back on his desk, trying to delete his own desires out of the situation, see it for what it was. A business transaction. Another variable to be assessed and addressed.
An opportunity.
The caller had been direct to the point of brusque. “You know whae this is?”
“Why of course I do,” he said, his tone neutral and measured. “And I have to say, this is an unexpected pleasure, and I’m slightly at a loss as to how you would be in possession of this number.”
“Never mind that shite,” the caller spat, tension thickening the coarse accent. “I’ve got some information you’ll find useful, something your bosses will no doubt be keen to hear.”
James bristled. Tightened his grip on the phone. His bosses?
“Yes,” he said calmly. The urge to lash out crawled through him again, a bone-deep itch to explode into anger, hurl the phone against the wall, upturn his desk, smash the computer and scream his rage to the world.
Instead, he rolled his shoulders, the leather of his seat creaking softly.
“So, you fucking interestit’ or no’?” the caller hissed.
“Potentially,” he said slowly, relishing the caller’s discomfort. He would make them suffer, show them who the real boss was here. “But first, I have two questions. What do you want in return for this information and why are you approaching me with it?”
A heavy sigh wheezed down the line, followed by a wet, eager sucking noise. A cigarette being drawn on deeply, the smoker no doubt finding relaxation and relief as ephemeral and elusive as the smoke that drifted from its glowing tip.
“Fuck’s sake, I just telt ye!” the caller shouted at last. “Yer bosses will want to know about this, especially with all this shite about Paul Redmonds flying about at the m
oment.”
James straightened in his chair, entirely focused on the phone call. “Go on,” he said, not surprised that his voice was half an octave deeper and devoid of anything resembling warmth or emotion. There was danger here. And in the face of danger, he was as cold and hard as a tempered blade. It was what he had learned to do. How he had survived.
“Firstly, I want a guarantee, okay?”
“Go on,” he repeated.
“Nae killin’. Ye can fuck him up a bit, nae problem. Deliver a message. But you cannae kill. If you do that, I’ll shout your fucking name from the rooftops, burn the whole bastard lot of you to the ground.”
“Kill who?” James asked, forcing himself not to break the phone in his grip.
“Rab MacFarlane,” the caller said, voice dropping to a whisper.
“And why would I want to ‘fuck up’ Rab MacFarlane?” James asked. He knew the name, of course, everyone who moved in certain circles of Edinburgh society did. He wasn’t adverse to a few less-than-legal sidelines, but hated drugs. And hookers. Not a natural business associate.
“Because,” the caller said, as though explaining a simple problem to an uncomprehending toddler, “he’s been asking about things that he shouldn’t be. Things that are liable to get him into real trouble. Things your bosses wouldn’t want him, or anyone, to be asking about.”
“Such as?”
“Paul Redmonds. The Falcon’s Rest. Dessie Banks. Want me to go on?”
James reached for a pen on his desk, held it like a knife. “And why would Mr MacFarlane be asking such questions? What’s his interest?”
“He’s daein’ a favour for Doug McGregor. You know, the reporter.”
James felt a thrill of excitement despite himself. McGregor. Again. “Oh yes, I know Mr McGregor quite well.”
A pause on the line, more sucking at the cigarette. Then, a question. Urgent. Furtive. “So what are ye going to do about it?”
All the Devils Page 11