Wicked Leaks

by Matt Bendoris

  ‘What is it, Elvis?’ Crosbie said frostily.

  ‘Just wondering why you hadn’t replied to my last text.’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘Too busy to even swear?’

  ‘Okay, I’ve been too fucking busy.’

  ‘I thought Amy might be keeping you on a short leash.’

  ‘Nah, not really.’

  Ah, the truth, Connor thought to himself. His rival Amy Jones had convinced his best cop contact to keep all his juicy information for her ears only.

  ‘Look, that’s fair enough, Bing. I can understand Amy wanting to keep you to herself. But I need you to do me one last favour.’

  ‘I think I’ve done you plenty of favours, Elvis.’

  ‘You have, but I need you to eyeball someone for me. A cop.’

  ‘Text it to me.’

  ‘It won’t text. Are you in work?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m still in the fucking shithole. I get my cunting screen-break in an hour.’

  ‘That’s more like the Bing I know. I’ll see you then.’

  Connor checked the map on his iPhone. It was forty-eight miles from East Kilbride to Bilston Glen police call handling centre in Midlothian. He would just make it on time.

  • • •

  DCI Crosbie was outside the main gates having a cigarette when Connor pulled up, flashing his lights to catch his attention. Crosbie opened the passenger door and got in while still smoking. Connor coughed in disgust.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Bing. You know I don’t smoke.’

  ‘It’s my fucking fag break. I’m only allowed three regulation breaks on my shift, so put a fucking window down, Elvis.’

  Connor waved the smoke away from his face as he showed the snatch picture of the cop from Kilsyth.

  ‘Ha, Charlie McGill. What a cunt,’ DCI Crosbie said, exhaling another plume of cigarette smoke in the reporter’s direction. ‘He was Royal Protection Squad. Met him briefly when Diana was in Scotland for the opening of the Garden Festival in 1988. Remember that one, Elvis? When she went up in that spinning tower thingy and pretended to be all scared, burying her head into Charles’ shoulder and doing her whole coy act?’

  ‘I certainly remember the pictures. Why does everything come back to bloody Diana these days?’

  ‘Everything? What you yakking about?’

  ‘Forget it. It’s just her name keeps coming up lately and I’ve no idea why.’

  ‘Anyway, Charlie McGill is your man. I never forget a cunt.’

  ‘Handy to know.’

  ‘Well, gotta go and log on again. I can’t begin to tell you how shit my life is now.’

  ‘At least you’ve got Amy.’

  ‘Aye, at least there’s that, for however long that lasts,’ Crosbie said, slamming the door shut and sparking up another cigarette for his short walk to the call handling centre’s front door.

  Connor gave a wry smile as he drove off, happy that his number one police contact had not only given a name to the man in the photo, but that cracks were beginning to show in his relationship with Amy Jones.

  The man in the car following behind Connor was far less pleased, though. He had a lot on his mind.

  70: The Mad Bat Society

  ‘How’d you get on with your computer geek?’ April asked Connor the next day in the confines of their broom cupboard office.

  ‘Not great. He freaked out.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Something about the hard drive. He asked if I’d got it from the military. Then basically showed me the door,’ Connor explained as he took the hard drive from his man-bag and placed it on his desk. Both journalists stared at it in silence.

  April was the first to speak. ‘Do you think that has the truth about Diana’s death on it?’

  ‘What is it about Diana at the moment? She’s everywhere I turn. And why does the whole world think her death is a conspiracy theory?’

  ‘Because it is a conspiracy. Come on, you must admit it stinks. She starts dating an Arab, could even have been pregnant with an Arab half-brother of the future king of England, then dies in a collision with a car that is never found, in a tunnel with all the cameras turned off.’

  ‘And blah-di-blah.’

  ‘No, it’s not blah-di-blah. Why did the ambulance taking her to hospital pull over to treat her?’

  ‘To save her life?’

  ‘No ambulance would delay getting her to an emergency room. They pulled over to let her die.’

  ‘I see. And you know this how?’

  ‘The inquest, stupid. The facts are all there. Even without any conspiracy theorist spin they are pretty startling. A doctor treated Diana at the scene for forty minutes – why?’

  ‘To save her life,’ Connor said half-bored, having had these discussions before down the pub with other conspiracy-happy colleagues.

  ‘He orders the ambulance driver to drive slowly. Why?’

  ‘Because she was so gravely injured?’ he offered in vain.

  ‘They then pass one hospital to go to another further away,’ she continued.

  ‘Maybe the first one didn’t have the facilities for such injuries?’

  If April heard her younger colleague, she ignored him. ‘The doctor then orders the ambulance driver to pull over to work on her some more. My cousin is an ambulance driver and he said you never drive slowly or stop with a critically ill patient. Your one and only priority is to get them to the hospital as fast as you can.’

  ‘I bet your cousin has never had to drive a dying Princess.’

  ‘And what about the embalming?’

  Connor sighed. Get into a conversation with a Diana conspiracist and they always mention the controversial embalming of the Princess just ten hours after her death. Many believe it was to cover up the fact she was carrying Dodi Fayed’s child, or illegal drug use – possibly both. At the 2007/08 inquest into the royal’s death, the Frenchman who carried out the procedure admitted he had done so without official authorisation, saying he feared that the Princess’s body would deteriorate in the heat of the Parisian summer.

  ‘How much can a body go off between the time she died and being flown home the next day, huh? It’s a cover-up. She was bumped off, plain and simple,’ April concluded.

  ‘Or she was being driven by a drunk driver, plain and simple,’ Connor countered.

  ‘The bar he was in said he only had one drink and a coffee. But his blood levels said he was three times over the limit. What a load of merde.’

  ‘I love how animated you get over Diana. But have you ever seen a Frenchman having just one or two drinks?’ Connor laughed, infuriating his colleague more.

  ‘That’s a stereotype. The same can be said of Scotsmen. Or Welshmen.’

  ‘I know it sounds like a stereotype but I have seen the French having lunch. I once witnessed three guys do seven bottles of wine over an hour. Then they got back on their skis and off they went.’

  ‘Bet you’ve never seen many Frenchmen falling down drunk in the street, though?’ April asked.

  ‘True, but only because they are permanently under the influence and just top themselves up. Why do you think it’s the law to have breathalysers in every vehicle now?’

  April carried on regardless. ‘And the paparazzi photographer found decapitated three years later in a burnt-out car? Locked from the inside and no car keys ever found,’ she said, her eyebrows arched towards the heavens.

  That, Connor conceded, was suspicious. ‘His head is said to have come off in the intense heat.’

  ‘With a hole in the side of his skull?’

  ‘I once read a story about a man who was cremated on a funeral pyre in India. His head exploded with the popping sound of a champagne cork,’ Connor recalled.

  ‘And the keys?’

  ‘Melted beyond recognition, I’d ima
gine,’ Connor said feebly, knowing his argument was growing weaker.

  ‘You really are a member of the Flat Earth Society, aren’t you?’ April said, looking at her younger colleague with nothing short of disdain.

  ‘Better than the Mad Bat Society. Look, even I would have to admit that there are many things about her death that don’t add up. But had she been wearing a seat belt she would have survived. The bodyguard is living proof of that. He was the only one in the car with his belt on, hence that’s why he’s still alive.’

  ‘Probably because all the other seat belts had been sabotaged.’

  ‘I give up with you, April. There is nothing I can say to convince you Diana died because of a drunk driver and her refusal to wear her belt. Let’s change the subject.’

  ‘Sure. So I bet you believe JFK was killed by a lone gunman, don’t you?’ April teased.

  ‘I’m out of here.’

  ‘Aw, I was only having some fun,’ she laughed.

  There was a knock at their door and the editor’s PA, Joan, popped her head into their office. ‘The boss wants to see you, Elvis. He’s with a man in a suit. Cop, I reckon. Looks serious.’

  ‘Thanks for the heads-up, Joan,’ Connor said, returning the hard drive to his man-bag, which he slipped into his top drawer. Turning to April, he said, ‘Don’t leave the room and don’t let anyone take my bag.’

  71: Tak-Ma-Doon

  Kelly and Monahan were both stiff from all the driving and an uncomfortable night spent sleeping in the hire car in an industrial estate’s car park off the M6, hidden between the rows of articulated lorries.

  Monahan parked the Mondeo at the viewpoint on the uniquely named Tak-Ma-Doon road. Kelly loved this single-lane strip of tarmac, which snaked upwards from Kilsyth over the hills before dropping down into Carron Valley and the town of Stirling beyond. To the left, she could see the iconic, rusty-coloured Forth Bridge and the flames spouting from the chimneys of the Grangemouth Refinery. Straight ahead was the new town of Cumbernauld. To the right, she could see the peak of Goat Fell on the Isle of Arran.

  But, unfortunately, this was not a time to sit around taking in the views. Kelly looked at Monahan. His skin was deathly grey, his haggardness accentuated by the white bristles of stubble. He’d lost so much weight that his trousers were now too roomy and flapping around his legs. Her patient was weak and she had enough experience of end-of-life care to know that time was running out. That’s why she had decided to bring him home. To her mother’s home, to be precise. He needed peace to die.

  The plan was to leave the car at the viewpoint and do a sweep past the house to see if anyone was watching it. If the coast was clear, they’d go in.

  Kelly took Monahan’s hand and they began the trek back down towards Kilsyth. Her parents had bought the old farmhouse on the outskirts of Kilsyth back in the Seventies. As a kid growing up, Kelly felt as though they lived in the middle of nowhere: in the winters she would get snowed in while the other kids made it to school. In the summers she could walk for hours over the hills by herself. The house had great views of Kelvin Valley; it was also ideal for spotting any unwanted visitors.

  They’d only just got started with their slow trudge when they disturbed a red grouse, which took off noisily by the fence separating the road from the fields. It gave them both a start, but helped relieve the tension and they shared a laugh then a brief kiss. They spotted a pair of soaring buzzards, catching a thermal by the hill locals called Tamtain. It wasn’t big enough to be classed as a Munro – which is any mountain over 3,000ft – but it was impressive enough.

  ‘That’s what I love about Scotland,’ said Kelly. ‘We’re sandwiched here between one million people in Glasgow and Edinburgh yet it feels like we’re in the wilderness of the Highlands.’

  ‘You’re such an old romantic, Kelly.’

  ‘Hey, less of the old,’ she replied, playfully slapping his arm.

  ‘I’ll tell you, there’s nothing romantic about the Highlands when you’re doing your winter training. Thought I was going to die as a young recruit when I lost the feeling in my hands and feet. Turned out to be mild frostbite. I always thought the people who died on Scottish mountains each year were idiots. You know, climbing Ben Nevis in their flip-flops and shorts, not realising it’s so cold at the top that the snow never melts. But as I lay there in a ditch with the best Nordic equipment the British Army had in their locker, thinking I was about to breathe my last, I realised just how deadly our mountains are.’

  ‘They’re not even that high, are they?’

  ‘I think that’s the problem. Ben Nevis is about 4,500ft. It’s a false sense of security because folk can walk up it in four hours instead of four days, like Mont Blanc.’

  Kelly liked talking about the mountains. It was a brief respite from the death and carnage. ‘I won’t want to leave when I see my kids, you know. I’m tired of running.’

  ‘I know. I’m done in too. But don’t drag the kids back into this just yet, okay?’ Monahan made her promise.

  ‘Okay,’ she reluctantly replied. Kelly had noticed Monahan was becoming seriously short of breath. It’s always the breathing that gives the game away with terminal patients. Kelly could instinctively sense when someone was in the final stages, although she wasn’t always right. She remembered sitting through the night with one woman, who she was convinced had taken her last, only for her chest to explode into life a minute later. She continued that way for five hours, which had been a blessing as it meant Kelly hadn’t needed to wake the woman’s family, who were taking a much-needed rest.

  At the mere thought of sleep Kelly suddenly felt exhausted. Her legs became heavy and weary as she trudged down the road. ‘When will this all end?’ she asked Monahan, who marched with a determined look in his eyes even though his body was in a dreadful state.

  ‘Soon, Kelly. Soon I’ll be out of your hair forever.’

  ‘I don’t want you out of my hair. You desperately need a bed and to be seen by a doctor.’

  Just as Monahan went to protest he stumbled and fell to one knee. Kelly instinctively grabbed him and he bounced back onto his feet.

  ‘No arguments. Rest first and we’ll figure out everything else later,’ Kelly insisted.

  72: Stolen goods

  Connor was shown into the room, and Joan closed the door behind him, which meant it was ‘serious’, as she had warned. His acting editor, Fraser Commons, was sitting behind his desk wearing a half-smile, which looked out of place as he wasn’t the jolly type.

  ‘Connor, this is Officer McGill from Special Branch.’

  He gave a nod of acknowledgment to his editor before staring at Officer McGill. It was the same cop who had pounced on him before he had even got out of the car in Kilsyth. The officer gave him a snide look in return.

  ‘Funny, I could have sworn you were Royal Protection Squad,’ Connor said, looking directly at McGill, whose cocky expression seemed to wane just a fraction as he tried to work out how the reporter had known.

  ‘Not for many years now,’ McGill replied, apparently trying to keep things light.

  ‘Give up around 1997, did you?’ It was Connor’s turn to be cocky.

  An uncomfortable silence fell between the two men, only to be broken by the editor.

  ‘Connor, this gentleman is looking for a hard drive that is the property of the Ministry of Defence. He believes it may have been passed to you.’

  ‘Any information used from it will be considered stolen data,’ McGill intervened.

  McGill may have had the element of surprise during their last encounter, but Connor was well prepared for him this time around, and the reporter wasn’t up for playing ball. ‘So, what’s on it? WikiLeaks stuff? What the French ambassador said to the US President and that sort of shit?’

  ‘It’s closer to home than that and it’s all highly classified,’ McGill replied.

&
nbsp; ‘I see. So what has it got to do with Kelly Carter? And why were you outside her estranged husband’s flat acting like a cock?’

  The exchange surprised the editor, who had no idea of McGill and Connor’s prior encounter.

  ‘Again, that’s classified information.’

  ‘Oh, right. So this is basically a one-way street. You tell us nothing and want everything in return?’

  ‘Only the hard drive, Mr Presley, and that’s the last you’ll hear from us. As we wouldn’t want to bother you with a handling stolen goods charge.’

  Connor laughed out loud. ‘This is priceless. You march into Scotland’s biggest selling daily newspaper, claiming to be from Special Branch when who-the-fuck knows where you’re really from. Then threaten me with petty crime. Is that honestly the best you can do? What about handling stolen state secrets? Or would that be too heavy and give the game away?’

  ‘The hard drive, Mr Presley,’ McGill demanded.

  ‘Piss off. I don’t have your hard drive.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ McGill asked, with all pretence of diplomacy gone.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fucking sure,’ Connor said, eyeballing McGill, before his editor intervened.

  ‘Now, now, gentlemen, if Connor comes across the hard drive, we will return it to you without delay, isn’t that right, Connor?’ He said it as an instruction, rather than a request.

  ‘Of course, as is procedure with any stolen items that come my way. Give me your contact details and I’ll buzz you if anything comes up,’ Connor replied in the friendliest voice he could muster, only to be betrayed by his eyes that were still looking daggers at McGill.

  McGill took a plain business card from his pocket and handed it to the reporter. There was no emblem of any police force on it, or design of any kind. All it stated was ‘Charlie McGill’, alongside a mobile phone number.

  ‘Simplistic,’ Connor said sarcastically while examining the card. ‘Special Branch cost-cutting, are they? Saves on ink, I guess.’