Bred in the Bone

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Relief and confused curiosity flooded through Jasmine in equal measure as she wrote down the number and the times of both the text message and the call. The digits meant nothing to her, but the fact that they had been dialled by someone else, on a different handset, gave her a horribly creepy feeling, like knowing a stranger had been inside her flat while she was out, even if it turned out he had only stolen a paper clip.

  As a kid she had learned all of her home phone numbers, and those of her best friends, committing them so indelibly to memory that she could still rhyme off some of them, years after she last had reason to dial them. By contrast, these days there were people she phoned several times a week whose actual numbers she had only ever seen as she copied them across from a text message to a contact file.

  Hesitantly, she began dialling the number on her mobile, wondering how she would phrase the question if somebody answered. She didn’t get that far, however. Before she had entered all of the digits, her phone was suggesting an autocomplete, ready to let her skip the last few keystrokes.

  She stared at the device like it was an alien artefact, double-checking against what the girl had just dictated, but there was no mistake. Before and after the shooting of Stevie Fullerton yesterday morning, somebody had been using her phone number to contact Glen Fallan.

  Unwarranted Sympathy

  Catherine had been inside Fullerton’s house once before, in the company of Dougie Abercorn two years back. Just like now, Stevie hadn’t been around, though on that occasion he had absented himself voluntarily.

  It felt empty, and not just through being bereft of its owner. She had been in attendance plenty of times as officers tramped through a murder victim’s property, and developed a poignant sense of who had lived there, of the presence that had been erased. Fullerton’s place lacked any kind of personal stamp, its material opulence expressing nothing other than wealth. It was gaudy but soulless, parts of it suggesting an attempt to recreate a Las Vegas hotel suite in the unlikely environment of Uddingston; others like a transplanted section of a furniture showroom. And like a hotel suite or a shop display, it felt transient, a place to be passed through, not lived in.

  There was a superabundance of marble and glass brick, galaxies of inset lighting overhead, a dining suite that looked like it had never hosted a meal and a ludicrous bathroom boasting Roman pillars either side of a staircase leading up to a Jacuzzi. All of it was expensive, and it could be described as merely excessive rather than outright tasteless; tasteless would at least have had a little more warmth.

  But maybe this was partly an effect of the welcome.

  Fullerton’s wife, Sheila, was monitoring proceedings with a simmering combination of suspicion and resentment, chaperoned by her late husband’s cousin and ‘business associate’ David Donnelly, known to his pals as Doke.

  ‘You know, Stevie was the victim here, no’ the fuckin’ accused,’ Donnelly had grunted when Catherine showed them the warrant to search the premises.

  They would find nothing connected to criminal activity, just the same as if they had searched the place last week. These guys worked hard to put layers of deniability between themselves and their activities. Doke knew Catherine understood this, which was why he was viewing what he anticipated as a futile search as harassment.

  It wasn’t, though. It was procedure. They were trying to establish a motive for why Fullerton had been killed, which was why there was also a team searching Fallan’s place in Northumberland.

  Sheila Fullerton was about five-two in heels and looked like she’d weigh six stone soaking wet. She reminded Catherine of a girl at school, of whom she had made the mistake of thinking mousy simply because she was slight. The girl had been all the more ferocious in compensation for her stature, and Catherine bet she was a pushover compared to Sheila here.

  She was dressed like she was twenty years younger, in a short black lycra skirt and low-cut black top matching her dyed jet-black hair. Her gaunt face was hard-set, a sharp angularity to it that struck Catherine uncharitably as rat-like, though this impression wasn’t helped by the hostility she was giving off like fumes rising from petrol. If she was feeling anything more conventionally associated with the bereaved, such as pain or sadness, then she wasnae lettin’ the fuckin’ polis see it.

  She stood in her kitchen, leaning against the sink, arms folded, searing her uninvited guests through eyes narrowed to slits.

  ‘Well seeing you’re all sneaking about here now that he’s gone,’ she said to Catherine, her voice dry and hoarse. ‘There’s none of you would have had the nerve to look him in the eye. Accused him of all sorts but you never pinned anything on him. Now you can write your own version, make up whatever you like, can’t you?’

  It sounded like it was intended as a rhetorical question, and Catherine guessed she was expected to tolerate it or to ignore it. Perhaps she should have.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I follow. I was confused by the Glasgow gangster double-think: on the one hand you want to make out Stevie never did anything wrong, and yet at the same time you’re boasting about how badass he was. Which is it to be?’

  Catherine saw a shudder pass through Sheila, an anger seizing her so tightly for a few seconds that her breathing became audible across the kitchen. It looked like a retort was thought better of, and when she did speak again her voice was softer, measured, but close to breaking.

  ‘I know your type, hen,’ she said. ‘You thought he was shite. You think I’m shite. Well, let me put you straight. He might have . . . He was . . .’

  Now her voice did fail her, breaking down for a moment, and when it returned it was barely above a whisper.

  ‘He was my husband.’

  She said it as an appeal to Catherine for compassion, for her to see her as a woman and understand what she had lost.

  In that moment Catherine caught a glimpse of herself and didn’t like what she saw. She felt shame upon her cheeks and looked at the floor, wondering how this hate could so diminish her humanity.

  When she looked up again she offered Sheila a different face.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Tears came now from those narrow, angry eyes. The façade was cracked. She grudged Catherine seeing it, but she was helpless and she knew it. Catherine offered her a tissue, which she accepted.

  ‘He was my husband. I loved him. And now he’s dead.’

  Just for a moment they were what they should have been: a widow recently bereaved and a police woman offering consolation and support. But just for a moment was as long as it lasted.

  ‘We want to find out why that happened,’ Catherine said softly, but she could see the barricades were already going back up.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Glen Fallan?’ Sheila replied acidly. ‘I hear that’s who you’ve pulled in.’

  ‘We already did. He’s not been very talkative.’

  ‘No, he never was.’

  ‘Did your husband mention Fallan recently? Did he have any reason to believe he was under threat?’

  Sheila’s face was stone-set once more. She was back in character.

  ‘I’m not letting you bastards use this to dig up shite about Stevie. If you want to know why it happened, then that’s for you to ask other people.’

  ‘Other people are where we go next, but here’s where we have to start. For instance, your husband’s mobile phone was missing when we found him. We think the gunman took it, though we haven’t found it yet. We need the account details so we can get in touch with his provider and trace who he’s been in contact with.’

  Catherine knew that they could get this anyway, indeed might already have it, but if she could get Sheila to volunteer something, to cooperate even just symbolically, then it could be the trickle that led to a torrent.

  Sheila folded her arms and stared back like a toddler in the huff.

  ‘It’s your call, Mrs Fullerton. But sooner or later you’re going to have to ask yourself what means more to you: being the keeper of the flame or finding
out the truth.’

  Catherine was almost at the kitchen door when Sheila spoke.

  ‘There’s a concertina file in the walk-in wardrobe, in the bedroom. Stevie keeps all the utility bills and stuff in there.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Sheila swallowed.

  ‘Kept,’ she added, closing her eyes.

  Catherine relayed the instructions to Beano and sent him upstairs to retrieve the file. She had considered going herself, because part of her was pruriently curious to see the bedroom concerned. However, another part of her knew that the smug amusement factor of tacky opulence was always in competition with a rising anger at where all the money had come from; and still another part felt that she was the tacky one for contemplating this trespass of Sheila’s dignity.

  Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the front hall Catherine could see Laura outside on the lawn, talking on the phone. When she caught Catherine’s eye, she pointed to the device to indicate that she had news.

  Catherine waited until Laura’s call had finished then strode outside, meeting her on an expanse of monoblock that ought to have its own postcode.

  ‘Forensics,’ Laura said. ‘Bit of a good news, bad news package.’

  ‘I’ll take the bad up front. I always ate my Brussels sprouts first so I could enjoy the turkey.’

  ‘Fallan’s gun didn’t fire the shots.’

  Catherine tutted. This was disappointing, but not a body blow.

  ‘Ballistics did a test-fire already?’ she asked. ‘Figures: they only make you wait when it’s good news.’

  ‘It never got as far as a test-fire,’ Laura told her. ‘The gun under Fallan’s vehicle was a nine-mil Beretta and the shell casings turned out to be twenty-twos. Low-velocity subsonic, ideal for a silencer.’

  Catherine wasn’t perturbed.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. The Beretta fires high-velocity stopping rounds: that’s the defence weapon he keeps stashed for tight scrapes. He’d ditch the one he used for the hit. What’s the good news?’

  ‘The transferred paint is a match.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘So that puts his vehicle there for sure. Can’t claim it was fake plates.’

  ‘Good going,’ Catherine told her. ‘It’s coming together.’

  ‘A motive would be nice.’

  Catherine’s attention was suddenly drawn to the approach of Beano, who was conspicuously unencumbered by a concertina file.

  ‘Did you not find it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no, it was where she said. The concertina file’s at the foot of the stairs. It’s just . . .’

  Beano had an odd look on his face, one that reminded her of Fraser when he was about to ask something that he already suspected might be really daft.

  ‘What?’ asked Laura impatiently.

  ‘Don’t laugh, but I think I’ve found something.’

  ‘You’re fair selling it to us with that build-up,’ said Catherine. ‘What is it?’

  He grimaced a little, as though bracing himself for a backlash, then presented a small white plastic rectangle on the palm of his hand.

  ‘This was sitting on the shelf, right next to the concertina file. It’s a library card, for the Mitchell.’

  Laura failed to honour his request for no laughter.

  ‘And what significance are you ascribing to that?’ she asked.

  ‘Are you kidding? Finding a library card in a gangster’s house is like finding a crack pipe on the space shuttle.’

  ‘Beano’s right,’ Catherine said. ‘The only books they read are football biographies and true-crime memoirs by other hard men, just to see if they get a mention. And they don’t borrow them from the library.’

  ‘The card shows that he only joined up last month,’ Beano went on. ‘I think Stevie might have been doing some research.’

  The 3025 Tour

  Glen had never heard a key rattle with such resonance as when it was locking a cell door with him inside it. It clattered and rang, slamming home the bolt with a reverberating finality, and with a clutch of several other keys jangling on the ring the retreating polisman sounded like Marley’s ghost. Seemed a miserable bastard as well. They all did, though Glen couldn’t see why: the cops were acting frustrated but he knew they had to be happy.

  He had killed Stevie Fullerton, and now they had him on toast.

  They didn’t need him to talk. Everybody knew what had happened between him and Stevie. It was simple.

  Except that nobody truly knew what had happened between them, and it was never simple.

  He thought about the last time he saw Stevie: shocked and fearful, facing his end under Glen’s gun. That wasn’t how he wanted to remember him.

  He preferred to picture the first time.

  These were the days – the last days – before drugs became the only game in town. Looking back, it was easy to depict guys like Tony McGill as though they were King Canute, locked in futile efforts to hold back an unstoppable tide, but the picture was different from the beach. Back then, nobody knew the extent to which drugs were going to dominate, not even the people dealing them. Folk went with whatever worked for them at the time, and rode any gravy train as far as it would take them, or until something quicker and easier might come along. Tony was raking in money from a plethora of more conventional scams, rackets and operations, some of which he’d been doing for decades, some of which had been dreamed up in recent months, and certain others of which it could be said went back centuries.

  The practice of bootlegging booze connected Tony to a Scottish tradition that probably dated back to the evening that the first excise law was passed. The practice of beating up restaurateurs and publicans if they didn’t buy it was a twentieth century refinement, but the basics remained the same, right down to the sea being the preferred conduit. No beacons and signal fires on the Ayrshire coast, however; not with P&O running such a regular service. Among his many nicknames, Tony was sometimes referred to as the Travel Agent, and credited with having sent more folk abroad than Thomson Holidays. By the time Glen started working for him, the running of that particular operation had been entrusted to Tony’s eldest son, Tony Junior, but the methods remained the same. Half of Gallowhaugh knew that if you wanted a cheap holiday you could get free ferry tickets plus a bit of spending money from Teej as long as you drove to Hull or Dover in one of his modified vehicles and made a few specified bulk purchases prior to your return. Families were ideal, as nobody suspected their VW camper van had been remodelled to hide crates of spirits or cigarettes under false floors or behind what still looked like cabinets, beds, sinks and stovetops.

  This aspect of the operation practically ran itself, which was probably the main reason Tony felt comfortable entrusting it to his son – together with the blindness many parents seemed to have regarding their cherished offspring’s limitations. Such nepotism aside, more generally Tony wasn’t shy of giving younger guys responsibility, as proven by his early recruitment of Glen. His philosophy seemed to be that if you were good enough, you were old enough. A case in point was a burgeoning young talent from Croftbank who already commanded a great deal of respect from Tony, despite being even younger than Teej.

  Stevie was at most only two years older than Glen, and didn’t even look that, but he had already served a long apprenticeship of thieving and scamming. He was smart and ambitious, with a sharp eye for the details of how shops and businesses operated their security.

  At the age of thirteen, when other kids were sticking cassettes down their jooks in WH Smith or grabbing a handful of pick-and-mix and running out of Woollies, he had perfected a distraction technique that brought in hundreds of pounds at a time from big city-centre stores. It was a three-man gig; or more accurately three-teen. Two of them would start arguing on the shop floor, eventually breaking into a fight. They’d really go at it too, making as much noise as possible, screaming and swearing, bashing into clothes racks and knocking things over. This would unfailingly cause the shop s
taff to abandon their tills and charge over to intervene, at which point Stevie would slip quietly behind the counter and lift every note they had. Some of the big-name stores had started fitting locks to the tills, so where possible he’d grab a set of keys too. It turned out they were often standardised across the whole chain, so a key lifted from Argyle Street in Glasgow would open a till on Princes Street in Edinburgh, making a day-return on the train well worth the dodged fare.

  When Glen first met him, it was to hand over a stack of National Savings books that Tony’s bagman, Walter, had mysteriously been accumulating.

  Walter was older than Tony – by ten years, Glen would learn – but seemed older still in his manner and appearance. He always tuned the car radio to Radio 2 and knew the words to all these slow songs from before Glen’s parents’ time. He’d sing along quietly to himself, a habit that for a long time concealed the fact that he and Glen never had a conversation. Everything about him seemed to belong in the past, even his name. Glen had never known anybody called Walter. It seemed a remnant from another generation, long since abandoned by modern fashion, like Mildred or Horace. The only Walter Glen could think of was Walter the Softy from ‘Dennis the Menace’, which may have contributed to the name being shunned. Glen didn’t imagine that anybody ever thought of this Walter as a softy. He was short, skinny and pale, but so was a cut-throat razor when it was folded up. He spoke quietly rather than softly, a gravelly rattle together with his staccato brevity giving a rasping quality to a voice he seldom raised. He smoked constantly and never seemed to eat.

  Amid their more substantial collection rounds, they kept stopping off at pubs and houses where people would hand over these wee blue books and Walter would pay them twenty quid. Glen had already learned not to ask Walter any questions not immediately pertinent to their next port of call, because it was as futile as it was frowned upon, so it was only when he was introduced to Stevie that he found out what the deal was.