In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

  When he pulled the passenger door shut behind him Darian asked, ‘What do you make of it, inquisitor?’

  ‘I wish his father didn’t work for that bloody bank so I could have told him to stick his job up his arse and jump out the window with it.’

  ‘Aye. And the boy?’

  ‘Well, it had nothing to do with money. There was good money ticking away in that watch, that really was worth mugging someone for, tempted by it myself. The posh always have fancy watches, it’s the only thing they have the imagination to give each other for Christmas. He knows more than he’s letting on, and he only gave us the one name because he knows that lad will back him up.’

  As the car putted into life and Sholto looked over his shoulder to reverse out of the space, Darian said, ‘We’ll have to talk to him when he’s on his own, when the father isn’t there to play stifling defence. I think he’ll tell us the story then.’

  ‘Aye, but it might not be the story the father wants to hear, and that doesn’t help us much. We’re done with Maeve Campbell, by the way. We found the killer and I’ll write up a bill for her and stick it in the post. Might even get this one wrapped up as fast as that one. You’re bringing me good luck in challenging circumstances these days, Darian, and I’m a big fan of good luck.’

  23

  IT WAS TEMPTING, when Sholto went home, to make a start on the work Maeve Campbell wanted him to tackle. She needed to know who had killed Moses Guerra and Darian wanted to help her. Of course he wanted to catch the right killer because getting it right mattered to him, but he had been thinking about Maeve all day, the smile and the legs crossing, the fierceness. She was a distraction. If he did some digging on the Moses case then he would have the excuse he wanted to go and see her again.

  Darian shook his head as he walked up Cage Street on his way to Glendan Station. He had to prove to himself he could resist the girl. He wasn’t in control of the case if he couldn’t recognise the need to go home and get a good night’s sleep. Maeve had hired him but if he wanted to be professional then he couldn’t let her control him. The Moses case mattered far more than Uisdean Kotkell taking a few slaps on a night out, that’s why the police had shrugged their collective shoulders in the face of his father’s demands, but Darian had no hope of helping either if he was less than half-awake. A night at Misgearan demanded abstinence for the next two.

  The train was busy on the short trip west through Bank. His radar was switched on as he walked, not scanning faces but alert to any movements that fell into sync with his own. Darian had lived in that flat on the corner of Havurn Road and Fàrdach Road for over two years and he had made that walk to and from the station at least twice a day every day since. He could see every crack in the pavements and picture every building with his eyes shut. He knew the people that usually hung around outside the doors of the station, the familiar characters he passed on the walk now and again. It took very little for him to notice someone out of place.

  The first trick to being followed is to never let your tail know you’ve spotted them. Darian needed this person to get close, to show themselves, because he didn’t recognise him at first glance. He was good at what he was doing and he was well covered, the hood of a puffy jacket pulled over his head; the weather does make tracking a person in Challaid without showing your face easier. Darian walked home, going at the same pace he usually did, making no deviation from his well-worn route. The same footsteps day after day; with paint on the soles of his shoes he would have marked out a very narrow trail. If this person knew he always got the train home and exited through the north door of Bank Station then he probably already knew where Darian lived.

  Only when he got into the building could he do something about it without giving his knowledge away. He ran up the stairs to his flat, went into the kitchen and took the bag out of the bin. It was only half-full but that didn’t matter. He pulled it shut and bolted back downstairs with it. He was back to being casual, moving at a sedate pace as he opened the front door and stepped out, walking along Havurn Road to the gap between his building and the next where the bins were stashed. He opened one and chucked the bag in, turning quickly and catching a split-second glimpse of his follower, just the side of his face as the man turned away and started walking out of view, but it was definitely Randulf Gallowglass.

  Back in the flat Darian sat near the living-room window with the light off, looking down into the street. There was nothing to see there, but he kept up the vigil. Gallowglass wouldn’t know for sure he’d been identified, but he had been seen and that would be enough to send him scurrying back under his rock. A good tracker, who doesn’t want to be seen, isn’t going to risk being picked out on the same street twice, hours apart. Even unidentified, his purpose would be understood. Darian kept looking in the hope that he would spot a car going past with Gallowglass or Corey in it, but that wasn’t necessary to confirm his suspicions.

  Gallowglass wasn’t back on his tail because he’d found a new hobby he liked. It hadn’t been a day and already Corey knew Darian was still working the Moses case, and maybe knew Maeve was going to try to help him out. Darian had spent many evenings, when he first moved in, sitting at that window, watching the lights of boats leaving and entering the loch, the view between the buildings down to the water. Now he sat looking down at dark grey tarmac lit yellow by artificial light, contemplating what this meant. Gallowglass hadn’t wanted to be seen, so this wasn’t a thuggish warning. This was Corey fishing for information before he tried to put a stop to Darian’s efforts. This was Darian putting the research company at risk by picking a fight he couldn’t win.

  The Bust of Acair Duff

  It was the story of the year at the university. It was a crime that the police had very little time for. In the bubble we live in it can be hard to appreciate how meaningless some things are. When Michael Watson, the first-year student who was the star of the university camanachd team, and Ben Gauld, the fourth year who was vice captain of the side, were assaulted returning to the halls of residence after a match, it was the only topic of discussion among us students. Michael Watson was in hospital for two days and missed three months of matches; Ben Gauld was only slightly injured and missed no matches. In a city where forty-one murders were reported last year, this was not a priority for the police. That would be why their investigation involved a few easy questions and nothing more. Because it was such a big deal to us all, I dug a little deeper.

  To understand why it matters it’s worth explaining why the university’s camanachd team matters. It’s the cheerfully brutal sport of the city, and the university team plays in the national league and cup. It may be the one thing that draws all students together, a flag to rally around. Only current students can play for the team, which has meant success has been, to be polite, occasional. Players may not make a lot of money from the sport, but they can become heroes in the city. The university hasn’t won the league since 1988, and only twice in a century, and hasn’t won the cup since ’96. Even a passionate support can lose its verve in the face of ingrained mediocrity. Then, along came Michael Watson. A first-year student studying mathematics, a likeable black kid from a working-class background, and one of the best camanachd players the university has ever had. With a solid supporting cast already in place he represented our best shot at silverware in a generation. Then he was attacked.

  Watson and Gauld had been playing a match that afternoon, beating An Fiadh-Chù, or Earmam Athletic to give them their proper name, 4-2 with two goals from Watson. It had been played up in Earmam, at their Sgleò Park ground, and the Challaid University players had made their own way home after the game. Some had gone for a few drinks, because that’s what students are prone to doing in the wake of everything. Watson and Gauld had got the train back to Ciad Station, the largest in Challaid because it’s where you get a train south out of the city, and walked down from there. As they made their way up the main approach to the halls of residence they were attacked from behind by three men. Watson s
uffered a broken ankle as well as facial injuries and two broken fingers, and Gauld suffered facial injuries and a cut hand.

  Now, this is where I, Catriona Ross, come in. The police had asked a few questions and then wandered off, leaving speculation in place of answers in their wake. I wasn’t satisfied with that, and felt there was more to learn. The place was swirling with rumours about scumbag Earmam Athletic players being behind the attack, and, as my brother Sorley was one of them, it was personal to me.

  ‘They were followed home from the bar they were in,’ one student said to me with zero evidence to support the claim. ‘Everyone knows it.’

  I prefer not to accept what everyone claims to know. They might have got hit in the head with sticks occasionally but they weren’t numb to the brain. There was no way Earmam players would have risked being seen leading an attack on campus grounds, where the security was obsessively tight. I know how insane some people are about Camanachd, and I know Sorley can be huffy in defeat, but this seemed like a big stretch.

  At times like this it pays to be pushy. I didn’t know either of the victims, I was a second-year student at the time so didn’t share any classes, but I sought them out. I saw Watson on the east green and made a beeline for him. Even on crutches he seemed energetic, tall and lithe.

  ‘Hi, Michael,’ I said with a cheery smile. ‘My name’s Cat Ross, I just really wanted to say how terrible it was what happened to you.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ he said, and started to move away. He’d have heard enough expressions of sympathy for mine to mean very little.

  ‘I was wondering if you saw who did it, the three guys? I know some people up in Earmam, a couple who play for their team; they might be able to help identify them.’

  ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t see them at all. They jumped us from behind.’

  ‘So Ben saw them? What did he say about them?’

  ‘He didn’t really see them either; he got jumped and saw the figures running away after. I’m sorry, but I’m running late... Hopping late.’

  ‘Oh, sure, go on,’ I said.

  The next step was to visit the security room on the ground floor of the halls of residence. The building is rather grand; a spectacle is how it was sneeringly described when it was built. Most of the university, like many other elements of Challaid life in the last three hundred years, was funded by the Sutherlands. The hall of residence was instead paid for by a donation in the mid-eighteenth security by a shipping magnate called Morogh Duff, who was, in every way, the opposite of the Sutherland family. To say Duff led a full life would be to undersell it criminally. He was wild, gregarious and loved to thumb his nose at the conservative establishment in the city of his birth who called him a pirate, hence the ostentatious building he paid for and the scholarships for the children of his working-class employees.

  The security room for the building was on the left side of the main entrance hall, across the colourful tiled mosaic of a ship crashing through waves and in through a small, arched doorway. There were two computers on a long desk and one young man in a shirt with a badge on it saying he was the security officer for the building. That was Nassir El-Amin, and if you were nosy enough to want to know what was happening in the building then Nas was a man you made friends with. It was easily done; he got awfully bored in that office. As resident nosey parker we knew each other well.

  ‘Hey, Cat,’ he said when I walked into the office.

  ‘Hi, Nas. Listen, can you help me out, I’m digging around in what happened to Watson and Gauld and I wondered what you’d heard. What did the cameras show?’

  ‘Cameras didn’t show anything but blackness. The ones at the front were down on that night because of a software shambles; they’d been down all day. We didn’t pick up anything of what happened, or who did it.’

  ‘They’d been down all day?’

  ‘Yep, since the early morning. The police weren’t impressed either when they came looking. I think that was the final straw for them. They asked a few questions of a few people, but I think they’re done poking around in this already.’

  I was about to leave but not before I mentioned something unusual in the office. The bust of Acair Duff, son of the man who paid for the building and himself a significant donor to the university, was on the floor in the corner of the room. It had been outside, atop his pedestal on the approach to the main entrance, but now it was in the security office with a chunk out of the back of its head.

  ‘What happened to your new roommate?’ I asked Nas.

  ‘Poor sod was the third victim of the attack, not that he’s getting any sympathy. They must have pushed him off the plinth when they attacked; he was all over the pavement. Not the first fellow we’ve found all over the pavement here after a wild night out, mind you.’

  That intrigued me, and I found myself out at the entrance, hood up against the rain, looking at the plinth where the bust had been. There were four, two on each side of the path, of people who had put good money into the university, all men with epic beards. I walked over to Acair’s father, Morogh, and gave the bust a gentle push. There was no movement. It was firmly in place, which meant whoever knocked Acair off his perch had hit him with real force. This was no pushover. The bust at head height, held in place with wires firmly enough to stop the Challaid wind blowing it over.

  I found Ben Gauld in one of the common rooms, watching his pals playing snooker and looking grumpy. He was sitting alone, so I gave him some company. He gave me an unwelcoming look, and I noticed the plaster on the side of his hand and bruises on his face. He was the sort of leader who could inspire great passion in a very small number of people. No one would build a statue of him, or name a ship after him, but someone might take it upon themselves to engrave his name on a small plaque and screw it to a university bench without permission.

  ‘Terrible business that,’ I said, nodding to the hand.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘You can’t have expected that to happen.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You getting hurt, I mean. When you jumped Watson you must have thought it would be clear and easy. You knew the cameras were down, had all day to find that out. You go and play the match and then you go drinking. Watson was probably all over the place on the way back, easy enough for you to drop behind without him noticing. You jump him and go for the ankle and hands because that’s what he needs to play, and then you try to run. Turned and sprinted right into poor old Acair Duff, didn’t you? It was him that roughed you up from beyond the grave.’ He stared at me, and his friends had stopped playing to listen, standing with snooker cues in their hands, but I must say I wasn’t scared. There were other people in the common room that had nothing to do with them, and being a Ross means picking fights with people who deserve it.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ben?’ one of the snooker players said. That was what did it, me putting the pieces into order for one of his friends who hadn’t realised what he had done.

  ‘We’ve been in that team three years. Three fucking years. Every time we win a bloody game it’s him at the bar, the hero, getting the pats on the back and the drinks. Does he do it alone? He’s hogging it all for himself and he’s only just in the door. He hasn’t earned any of it.’

  So that was it, one of my first investigations. It never came out publicly that Gauld was behind the attack, but he never played for the university again, claiming a hand injury. Watson made it back, but by then the season was a washout, and Challaid University would have to keep waiting for the drought to end. A month later Watson stopped me in a corridor and took me aside to whisper a thank-you. He was a polite kid, not the sort who wanted trouble, and I think he was struggling to find his place at the university. I believe he knew who attacked him that night, and he was glad someone else had proved it for him.

  24

  ‘THIS ISN’T GOING to be worth our valuable time.’

  Darian was sitting in the passenger seat of Sholto’s Fiat. He s
aid, ‘You don’t think?’

  ‘Nah, no chance.’

  Sholto enjoyed speaking as a master to his apprentice, letting Darian know he’d done this all before. It was an act of basic kindness to let him ramble on about it, even though Darian already knew why the boss was right.

  Darian asked, ‘Why not? He’s Uisdean’s friend, he was with him on the night. If anyone saw something it’s bound to be the friend.’

  ‘Well, first of all, that beating the boy took, whatever it was for, it was a setup. They knew he was in the club and they tiptoed up behind him when he came out. The friend didn’t go with him down the alley, so he wouldn’t have seen the attacker because the attacker would have made sure he didn’t. Place as busy as that and no one saw him? This person knows how to play the game. Second of all, Uisdean doesn’t want us to know what really happened, so there’s a good chance this reliable pal he’s willing to name will have his lips sewn shut as well. They’ll look out for each other.’

  ‘So why bother at all?’

  ‘Passes the time, and Kotkell’s paying by the hour.’

  It wasn’t just their own time they were passing, it was Darian’s sister Cat’s as well. Leandro Oriol lived in the halls of residence at the university in the south end of Cnocaid, in the same large building she stayed in. They were sticklers for security, so Darian and Sholto needed someone with a pass to get them in. He had called Cat and asked if she could help. She had said yes, but only if she got to sit in on the interview, because seeing them at work promised to be entertaining and maybe even educational.

  She was waiting for them at the main doors. The building was old, finished in 1762, and came with a high, arched entrance and doors thick enough to make an invading army pause for thought.

  Darian smiled when he saw her, walked over and gave his sister a hug. ‘Good to see you, Cat.’