In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, so here’s what I’ve got. The first thing I did was go and find out who the best friend of Moses from the list was. None of the big-money people, but I thought about which one he talked about most and I went to see him. I don’t think now that he was that big a mate of Moses, but he was willing to speak to me. His name’s Nick Palazzo. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring a bell, apart from being on the list.’

  ‘If you’d ever met him you would remember. He dresses to be seen from space and I’m pretty sure he’s crazy enough to be locked up as a precaution. He’ll burn the world down one day. So far his criminal life is just working for other people, so he’s probably under the radar and he was just using Moses to clean up the small amounts of cash he got occasionally paid. There’s no way Nick was involved, he knew nothing about it and he rabbited on for ages about Moses and how good a guy he was. Sometimes, the way he bangs on like that, I think it was sarcastic, but he was surprised by what happened, that much was true. I wrote down all the little things he said, like you suggested, but I can’t see much to help us.’

  Maeve held up the notebook for him to see the scribbled writing across two pages. She was excited and her movements were jerky, caught up in the thrill of the chase. It made Darian smile, remembering that he had been the same way when he started out, not that long ago, Sholto always telling him to damp down the fire.

  ‘So we can scratch Captain Crazy off the list?’

  ‘Yeah, we can. But I had time to go to someone else on the list, Frang Hunter. Now, I know he’s a proper criminal type, so you’ve probably heard of him.’

  ‘Yeah, I have, and he’s exactly the sort of person that you shouldn’t be talking to on your own. He’s a violent criminal and he’s sent people to Heilam for less than digging around in his financial affairs.’

  ‘Oh please, Frang was fine. You need to stop thinking that every criminal is a terrible threat to every decent person they meet, that’s naïve. And you need to stop thinking that a woman on her own can’t go and have a conversation with someone without being in terrible peril. I didn’t need rescuing and I didn’t need you there to hold my hand. If I’d turned up with a private detective in tow then I might have needed rescuing, but so would you.’

  ‘I’m not a private detective, I’m an investigative researcher, but point taken.’

  Maeve smiled at his sulking tone and said, ‘So I went round and met him and his wife, Brenda, who was there as well, and they both told me how sad they were about what had happened to Moses. I asked Frang what he thought about the killing and he sort of clammed up, used the whole “they’ve got someone for it so that must be who did it” argument. I said I wasn’t sure and, Brenda, she gave him a nudge and then he admitted he wasn’t sure either. The way he saw it, Cummins couldn’t have killed Moses even if he’d wanted to because he didn’t have the guts or the muscle. Moses wasn’t big, but he could handle someone like that. And there were much better candidates that might have used Cummins and his debt as a shield. When he started talking he was going on about the kind of people who did business with Moses, how he didn’t know who many of them were but some of them had to be serious. Then he said the people with the money to use Cummins as a shield, pay off his debt in exchange for him taking the spotlight for a while, weren’t just the people that used Moses, they were the people that Moses used.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The businesses that Moses cleaned the money through and the people who ran them. According to Frang, a lot of those people weren’t just small-business owners looking for a quick buck on the side; some of them were major companies who want a slice of the dirty market. He thinks some might have been major companies working with criminals who use the legitimate to cover their criminal earnings, especially when it goes offshore to Caledonia and back.’

  ‘I thought of them, but, I don’t know, the way it happened didn’t seem professional.’

  ‘Maybe the person they sent botched it, or deliberately made it look amateurish. It makes some sense, doesn’t it, that we’ve been pointing in the wrong direction with this? We’ve been looking at the people who used Moses instead the people Moses used.’

  ‘It does make sense, yeah.’

  Darian took another sip of wine, which reminded him how appalling it was. He looked across at Maeve and saw how excited she was by the progress they had made, her face flushed. She was looking down at her notebook with an intense expression, and then looked up at Darian.

  She said, ‘What?’

  He shook his head a little and said, ‘It’s good to make some progress, but we have to remember that the chances of us getting where we want to go are slim. We have to find proof, real proof, that we can put in front of a judge.’

  ‘I know that, it needs to be something that can stand on its own two feet without us propping it up, but I think you and me can do it. I think you and me make a hell of an us.’

  ‘Yeah, I think we do, too.’

  He finished the glass of wine out of iron-stomached politeness and refused a top-up. Darian was tired; he needed some rest, so he got up to go. At the door Maeve gave him a brief hug of thanks. Her body pressed against his felt good.

  31

  LETTING MAEVE DO all the work and take all the risks felt like a failure to Darian. That was why he was up early the following morning, taking a detour up to Earmam before he went to work. Down Caol Lane and into Sigurds to interrupt the morning of a woman he should have been sensible enough to avoid. If Maeve was meeting with dangerous people then the least he could do was match her daring commitment.

  Viv was standing at the bar, in her usual spot, with no drink in front of her, which meant she must have just arrived. She was wearing tight trousers and a coat, looking tremendously respectable and refined to Darian. She looked like she was taking a drinks break halfway through the school run. He stepped up beside her and got an annoyed glance.

  ‘I’ll pay for your next one.’

  Viv said, ‘I don’t pay for drinks here.’

  ‘Free drinks? Any tips on how you swing an arrangement like that?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Darian took a look around at the pub. There wasn’t another soul in there, not even the barman, although he could hear crates rattling in a backroom behind the bar. Seemed like the barman always found something to do in any other part of the building when Viv was there. Despite that, Darian kept his voice down when he spoke.

  ‘I need to ask you a couple more questions, nothing that’ll cause you any trouble.’

  She looked hard at him when she said, ‘You’re nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be dramatic. I gave you fair warning of bad weather heading your way last time, and all I have this time are a couple of very minor questions. I want to ask you about the money Randle Cummins paid you. You said he paid it all off soon after Moses was killed.’

  ‘I remember what I said; it’s a brain inside my skull, not a cabbage.’

  ‘You said he paid it in full, in a oner, this guy who didn’t have a penny to his name beforehand, and he didn’t tell you anything about it? He wasn’t reading from a script when he handed it over?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘What sort of state was he in when he delivered the cash?’

  ‘You think I was there waiting for him, my heart aflutter?’

  ‘Someone must have seen him.’

  ‘No, he dropped it at the unit.’

  ‘The unit?’

  She sighed through her nose and said, ‘We have an industrial unit off Tobacco Road; we use it as a drop-off point.’

  At that moment the barman emerged from the door behind the bar, wiping his hands on a dirty blue towel, finished with his crates and ready to serve the woman he dared not leave dry. As he moved towards the more expensive whisky bottles he nodded and said, ‘Morning, Viv.’

  ‘Thalla is cac.’

  Without any hint that he’d been offended,
the barman turned quickly on his heel and disappeared back through the door.

  Viv turned to Darian and said, ‘With a lot of people we pick the money up from them. If they’re hard to get to, or they suddenly find themselves with cash they want to be relieved of, there’s a drop point. The unit is open, there are lock boxes inside. You put the money and a message in the open box, close the box and it locks automatically. They’re welded to the floor, not that anyone’s stupid enough to steal from us.’

  ‘So there was no one at the unit to see him deliver, and I guess no camera.’

  ‘Ha, good guess, Rebus. Of course there’s no bloody camera at our drop-off point. We’re trying to encourage people to use it, not chase them away. He left a note in the box with the money.’

  ‘Do you have the note?’

  ‘Do I have the note? You think I keep notes from people like Randle Cummins? They’re not love letters, scented and kept in a little shoebox, tied with a ribbon.’

  ‘What did the note say?’

  Viv gave him a look and said, ‘You started this saying you were only going to ask me a couple of questions, we’re past a couple now, in case you’re innumerate. I don’t remember what the note said, the same nonsense they always say. Here’s your money, it’s all there, the debt is repaid. They always put that last line in about the debt being cleared, as though we might not realise.’

  ‘All right, I’ll leave you to your breakfast.’

  ‘If you think I’ll ever repeat a word of what I’ve said here in front of a cop or a judge you’ll be crying yourself to sleep.’

  ‘I expect nothing more of you.’

  Darian was halfway to the door when Viv said, ‘Say hello to Sorley for me, and remind him to remember what I told him.’

  It was the same instruction she’d left him with last time, so it meant something to her. Darian said nothing, and walked out of the bar.

  THE CHALLAID GAZETTE AND ADVERTISER

  07 Mar 2018

  LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

  THE GANNTAIR REPORT

  Dear Sir,

  I’m writing after reading in your paper the article New Report Condemns Conditions in The Ganntair (01/03/18) and being angry with the reaction to it. In your report council leader Morag Blake (Liberal Party) said that she supported the new leadership of the prison and would work with them to improve standards. Hasn’t she said this before? Hasn’t she said this every year for the last three?

  I have experience of the prison through my family, and I know that what was in the Inspectorate Report was only the tip of the iceberg, everyone with family at the prison knows. No one wants to talk about it because no prisoner wants to become a target for the staff or for the gangs that really control the place.

  The report said that use of force was high and records of it poor. That’s because use of force by staff is routine and the prison leadership doesn’t want it properly reported because it would show how little control they have over prisoners and how violence is the only answer they have to that lack of control. That’s not so much the staff’s fault, it’s because there are far too few of them to begin with.

  I know, and everyone who visits the prison more than once a year like the inspectors knows, that prisoners aren’t safe in The Ganntair. The culture of violence is rife and the only way most prisoners can have any safety at all is to join a gang they previously had nothing to do with. Young men are going in there for offences that had nothing to do with gang violence and they’re coming out tied to gangs because it’s the only way to survive. Again, the prison and its leadership know this and have done nothing to stop it.

  Drugs are common in the prison, and criminal business is conducted in the open. There are men in there who would like to change their lives for the better, get rehabilitated, but they can’t because the conditions make it impossible.

  Convener Blake needs to stop supporting failing leadership in the prison and start taking action. How many years will we keep seeing the same report and the same reaction from our political leaders? How bad does the situation have to get? The understaffing and completely outdated facilities mean that we will be talking about this as a tragedy before long.

  I know there isn’t much sympathy for families like mine, with members in The Ganntair. People are there because they broke the law and people want them to be punished, but how will anyone ever be rehabilitated when the environment they’re going into is far more dangerous and criminal than the one they’re being taken out of? That’s the question the convener and the prison leadership have to answer.

  (Name and address supplied)

  THE NAME GAME

  Dear Sir,

  I read with some amusement your editorial (03/03/18) re the campaign underway to change the name of Bank district. Your argument appeared to be that as it has been called Bank for three centuries, and we don’t know the origins of the previous Ciùin Brae name, it would be pointless to change now, but isn’t that an argument to the contrary?

  We know that it was called some variation of Ciùin Brae for far longer than three hundred years, and we know too why it was changed. The shift to Bank has nothing to do with the location on the south bank, every district in the city is on one or other bank of the loch, but an attempt to satisfy the industry (cont.)

  32

  ‘THROUGH HERE.’

  The man leading Darian wasn’t in uniform, just a plain middle-aged man in a suit. He was involved in administration at the prison at a high enough level to get Darian an unrecorded meeting with a prisoner. He was a contact Darian and Sorley had worked together to cultivate, one of several in the prison they used to keep updated about their father.

  He knew the prison in Earmam well, went to visit his father every month. The three kids all went on separate weeks, their attempt to make sure their father always had someone to speak to and a visit to look forward to. He was an isolated man in there, with very few people it was safe for an ex-detective to be around. He always told them he was doing fine, but they didn’t expect him to tell them the truth when he was trying to protect his children from it.

  The man, who we won’t name because he shouldn’t have been helping Darian, said, ‘Your father’s still doing well, far as I can tell.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  He had led Darian into a small office on the second floor, sparsely furnished and obviously never used. There was an empty desk with a chair on either side and a metal filing cabinet by the door with the top drawer missing and nothing in the others. There were no bars on the large window, but you’d have needed to learn to fly before you tried to jump.

  Darian looked out of the window at the wing jutting out opposite the one he was in, and then down at the yard between them. His father was in that wing somewhere, that sprawling place populated by some of the worst examples of humanity Challaid had produced in the last half-century. The female prisoners were sent down to the central belt, Cornton Vale. The minor offenders went to softer prisons, Huntly usually. The paedophiles were sent to Peterhead because they had a rehabilitation programme there and any sent to The Ganntair would have had slim chance of leaving with the same number of body parts they’d possessed upon arrival. They protected the paedophiles, but they sent his father here, among men he had locked up. They had insisted, the prosecution arguing it was necessary to show that Edmund Ross wouldn’t get preferential treatment because he was a former police officer. The family all saw it as an act of malice.

  The door opened and a prison officer shoved Randle Cummins into the room with gleeful force. The prisoner looked over his shoulder and tutted as the door was closed, the officer on the outside, and then looked round at Darian.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s all me. Sit down, Randle.’

  He did as he was told, a dirty look the extent of his protest. He was still as sallow and blotchy as before and now he was picking at a small cut high in his forehead with dirty fingernails. As he sat at the table he sai
d, ‘What do you want? Come to try and throw more shite at me, have you?’

  ‘Actually, no, I’m trying to wipe off some of the shite you’re already covered in. They’ve charged you with murder because they know they can get a conviction. You don’t have to be guilty, Randle, you just have to do a good job of looking like it, and so far it’s uncanny.’

  ‘It won’t get to court, I know that.’

  ‘If there wasn’t enough to get you to court you would be sitting in your grim little house right now, instead of this relative luxury.’

  Cummins blinked heavily and said, ‘I know what your game is; you’re here to try and get me to say something stupid, try and trick me to make me look guilty. I’m not daft. You say you’re here to help me but I got to help you first, and then you get me to say something that gets me in even worse fucking trouble.’

  ‘You’ve been charged with murder. How much worse do you think I can make it?’

  ‘It won’t get to court.’

  ‘I’m trying to help you here, Randle, but you have to be willing to help yourself.’

  ‘Uh-huh, here it comes, here it comes.’

  ‘I’m going to talk and you’re not going to interrupt me, Randle, got that? They have charged you with murdering Moses Guerra and stealing money from his flat. Within hours of Moses being killed, someone went to the Creags’ unit and paid off your debt in full, leaving a note claiming to be from you. I don’t believe for one second that it was you who delivered that cash.’

  Cummins looked like a man whose brain was falling over its own feet trying to find an answer. There was nothing behind his eyes to help him, so he just scoffed and looked towards the window.

  ‘Who paid your debt off for you?’

  No answer.

  ‘Someone came to you and told you to take the fall, didn’t they? They’d handle your debts and make sure you were looked after in here, maybe get you out nice and early. Was that it?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? You’ve lost it, pal.’