In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

  ‘Uh, no, nothing. I told you everything I can remember at the hospital.’

  He seemed nervous, a young man trying to be polite but worried his good manners would invite more questions and prolong the ordeal.

  Darian nodded and said, ‘So you haven’t thought of a reason why someone might want to attack you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One of the people we talked to in the course of our investigation was Dillan Howard. We suspected him for a while, but I don’t think he did it, but I did wonder if maybe someone attacked you because of your relationship with him.’

  ‘I don’t have a relationship with him.’

  ‘Friendship, then.’

  ‘We just hung around a bit, went to the same clubs, that’s all. I don’t see what that has to do with this.’

  ‘He’s a bit of a lad, Dillan, from what we’ve heard. Maybe someone thought they could rattle him a little by rattling the hell out of you.’

  ‘That’s nuts, he has loads of people closer to him than me.’

  ‘Someone was waiting for you, Uisdean, watching out for you. I don’t think this was random and I think you know why it wasn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  The door to the study opened and Leala Kotkell walked in and sat next to her son. Darian looked at Sholto and gave him the nod to take over. He was fresh out of questions and figured it was probably time to say a polite goodbye and leave this waste of time behind.

  Sholto said, ‘What we’ll probably try to do next is go public, get the word out about what happened and see if someone who was outside the club that night will come forward. It’ll mean a lot of people finding out about it all, but that’s what it takes sometimes.’

  Sholto looked at Uisdean and Uisdean looked back, silent. Sholto’s expression suggested he didn’t like trying to lean this hard on the kid, but it was one of the few remaining ways of tempting the truth out of him. It had no effect.

  Uisdean said, ‘Good luck. If you’ll excuse me, I have a headache.’

  Uisdean got up and walked out of the room. His mother stood and looked at the two of them with hatred and said, ‘Now that you’ve made my son ill perhaps you’ll consider your work here done and leave.’

  Sholto said as he got up, ‘Sorry, Mrs Kotkell, we certainly didn’t want to make the boy sick, we just want to try to resolve this as quickly as possible, for his own sake. I don’t blame him for having headaches, though, it can be very traumatising, getting beaten up and then having to go over it again afterwards so carefully, so many times.’

  If her mood softened at the sound of an apology it was imperceptible. She led them out of the study and to the front door.

  36

  LEALA KOTKELL OPENED the front door for them and Sholto went out first. He stopped in his tracks on the top step, blocking Darian’s exit. Looking over Sholto’s shoulder, Darian caught a glimpse of what had caused the breakdown ahead of him. A large, sleek car was in the driveway now, its engine still running and the driver behind the wheel. The man who had been in the back was out and walking fast across to the front door, a furious look on his face, and Durell Kotkell did fury like a pro. If Leala had phoned her husband as soon as Darian and Sholto arrived, then that driver must have put Jim Clark to shame getting up from Bank in that time. Kotkell could afford the speeding fines, although how his driver found roads clear enough to speed on is an otherworldly sort of mystery.

  ‘Why exactly are you here without informing me first?’

  He stood with his hands on his hips, a hard expression that was supposed to convey rising anger and provoke the subject into trying to placate him. It probably worked on his many staff.

  Before either of them could answer, Leala said, ‘They upset Uisdean, upset him terribly. He’s had to go back to bed with another headache because of these men you hired.’

  There was venom in those last few words and it was directed at all three people in front of her, although the sneer in the word ‘men’ was just for Sholto and Darian. Sholto turned and looked at Leala with a hurt expression, as though she had betrayed a confidence. He said, ‘We were just asking a few questions relating to our investigations, trying to do the right thing, that’s all.’

  Durell said, ‘That’s all? The man who assaulted my son is still out there and the most you’ve achieved on my money is to upset my son further.’

  His tone was mocking and Darian had heard enough of it. ‘We had a few questions for him to help us rule out things that related to what we’ve uncovered so far. We were hired to do all we could to catch the attacker, and that means asking questions, even if they’re sometimes uncomfortable.’

  ‘Uncomfortable? What uncomfortable questions do you think you have the right to ask my son?’

  Sholto said, ‘Well, I’m sure you don’t want to talk about this out on the doorstep.’

  ‘I asked the question on the doorstep and you can provide me with the answer here as well.’

  Given the gaps between houses on the street they would have needed a loudspeaker for the neighbours to overhear them, so Darian said, ‘We asked him about his relationships, whether he was still in touch with someone we had thought might have been involved in the incident, and we can now rule that out.’

  ‘Relationships? You think if this was some strop over a boy my son wouldn’t have said? I can assure you both he is a very responsible young man; he would not be keeping it to himself if it was something as mundane as that. Bloody hell, I would expect even the halfwits in uniform at Challaid Police could have solved that little puzzle.’

  Sholto breathed out a sigh of relief that Darian had to cover by talking over it. ‘As it happens, we agree with you. It has nothing to do with his private life. But our investigation led us in that direction and it’s right and proper that we gather all the information before we ruled it out. We need to be thorough.’

  ‘Thorough enough to upset both my son and my wife, both of whom have been through enough of an ordeal without you piling in on top of it. I’m beginning to think I may have hired the wrong people.’

  He looked at them with an expression that was designed to be a challenge. Darian could feel his temperature rising, ready to snap back, when Sholto said, ‘Of course we’re very sorry if you feel that way, Mr Kotkell. We were hired to get a result, to make sure we found the person responsible, and we weren’t going to hold back in doing that. I’m sorry it’s arrived here.’

  Kotkell scoffed and said, ‘I should sack the pair of you, go and find someone with more good sense, which wouldn’t require much of a manhunt, but I won’t. You two need to buck up your ideas, start putting some proper effort into this instead of chasing easy options. I’ll give you a week, and if you haven’t made progress by then my reaction will be very bloody notable.’

  His tone made it clear it was time to get the hell off his front step and into the city to look for his son’s attacker. They scuttled down the drive and along the street to where the Fiat was parked. There was another car along the road that actually looked like it was in the same price range, and presumably belonged to someone’s cleaner. They got in and Sholto started driving, eager to clear out of Barton.

  Darian said, ‘The man’s an arsehole.’

  ‘Aye, but the thing about arseholes is that they can cause a terrible stink. We need to work out what the attack was all about and if it wasn’t his bedroom business than we don’t have a single lead.’

  ‘Why didn’t he sack us? A guy like that, upset with us, thinking we’ve done a bad job, why didn’t he sack us?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Darian. Don’t talk us out of work. You’ve brought us enough bad luck this week already.’

  Sholto kept driving, and Darian kept thinking about Kotkell and his surprising reprieve. A man who probably sacked people every day of his working life and could afford to replace them with any investigator of his choosing and yet he had kept them on. Darian thought back to the coincidence of Kotkell hiring them to investigate a case Corey’s station had shrug
ged off.

  37

  DARIAN NEEDED A bit of help. For day-to-day work it was fine to take the train; he was rarely in a terrible rush and spent more time sitting stationary outside places like the Murdoch warehouses than was conducive to a healthy lifestyle. To do the job he wanted to do that night he needed a car, and that meant going to Tuit Road in Bakers Moor to visit JJ’s car hire. It was a place you went when you had a sad lack of funds and didn’t care what state the car was in, as long as it was basically mobile. It was a small building and patch of dirt tucked away in the gloom under the hills, and that might have been why standards authorities hadn’t swooped in and shut it down yet. JJ made most of his money selling death-traps masquerading as automobiles, but he hired out to customers he knew wouldn’t complain, and they included Darian. JJ was another useful contact to have.

  In the yard behind the office, JJ and Darian sauntered among the cars. If you took a photo of the parking lot and said it was a wrecking yard all the evidence would suggest you were telling the truth. JJ’s face was almost perfectly round and yellow, with a damp-looking, thin beard, like someone had cleared out a drain and slapped their findings on a turnip. He dressed in filthy blue overalls and he plainly didn’t give a crap what his yard looked like. When he spoke it was with a heavy slur that suggested he was halfway into a long line of mini-strokes and was determined to bluster his way through them.

  ‘This one will stay underneath you.’

  Darian looked at the dark blue Skoda Octavia, nearly a decade old. ‘How many miles has that got?’

  ‘Eesh, round the world and back, hundred and fifty thousand. It goes, though, Darian boy, got a few thousand more left to run before I turn her into parts.’

  It was what he was looking for, an ordinary-looking car that could trundle round the city without drawing the eye. It was also remarkably cheap, which put it right in his price range. JJ went back to the office to get him the keys. The car, when he opened the door, smelled overwhelmingly of sweat, and even JJ, used to ignoring the hellish stenches that floated around him, grimaced.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll get you a wee doofer to put over the blowers.’

  He got an air freshener from the office to clip over the heaters, but when Darian tried to switch them on, no air come out.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll get you a forest of magic trees.’

  So Darian left with four colourful trees hanging from the rear-view mirror, a mixture of sweet smells that was only slightly better than the sweat. He drove north, through Earmam and Whisper Hill and out to Heilam with the windows open. He parked round the corner from Gallowglass’s house and waited for the former cop to make an appearance.

  At twenty to eleven Gallowglass came out of his house and got into his car. He drove south into the city and Darian hung back, putting his tailing talents to the test. He wasn’t going to the station to watch for Darian, which meant that the spying mission had been terminated. Tracking suspects was one of the things Sholto was markedly better at than him, because practice made perfect and Darian didn’t have as much experience as he’d expected because following people didn’t happen too often in the world of pretend private detectives. He had decided at the start that he would rather lose him than risk getting too close. Turning the tables was fine so long as you didn’t smack into one of them.

  It was a long drive, back down to the end of the loch and round into Cnocaid. They went through neighbourhoods that were familiar to Darian, near where he’d grown up. All the streets look the same round there, detached houses with small front gardens, close together so few have driveways and there are rarely available parking spaces out front. Some roads have trees lined beside the pavement; Treubh Road where Darian had grown up had cherry blossoms. There were none on Pagall Street, where Gallowglass’s journey ended.

  He stopped when Darian was too close to do the same without being spotted, so he drove past and caught a glimpse of the ex-cop, sitting in the car and watching a house across the street. Darian drove to the end of the road, circled round the block and came back to the top of Pagall Street, finding somewhere out of view to park. He took out his phone and zoomed in the camera function, just able to make out the back of Gallowglass’s head, still in the car.

  This was more the sort of work he was used to. Sitting in a smelly car watching nothing at all happen nearby. For all the skills that investigations require, patience is the most important. Darian recognised what Gallowglass was doing; it was the same tactic he had used on Cage Street when he stood outside the office, unpleasant and unmoving. He was watching the house that was directly opposite his parking space, which guaranteed that anyone inside would have a perfect view of him when they looked out of the window. This wasn’t a man trying to spy on someone; he was trying to intimidate them.

  Shortly after three in the morning another car drove past Darian’s and stopped further up the street, just in front of Gallowglass. A man got out and leaned down to the window of Gallowglass’s car, talking to him. It was DC Alasdair MacDuff. They shared a short conversation in which the man in the car did most of the talking and the man leaning down to the window looked somewhere between angry and embarrassed. MacDuff went back to his car and sat in the driver’s seat while Gallowglass pulled away.

  MacDuff did as Gallowglass had done before him, sat there and watched the house directly opposite, making no effort to look like anything other than a thinly veiled threat. At about twenty past seven there was movement, and Darian was just able to see a man appearing at the front gate. He hadn’t seen the door open – the angle he was parked at didn’t give him a great view of the house – but MacDuff had. When the middle-aged man reached the gate, the young detective started his car and drove away. No need to stick around in daylight, with neighbours seeing him, now the message had been delivered.

  Darian waited for a few minutes, until he was sure the householder had gone back inside. MacDuff had wanted to be seen but Darian didn’t, not until he knew who the person he was stalking had been stalking. He drove the Skoda back to his flat and parked outside. He left a message on Sholto’s work phone saying he would be late in because of some extra work he had done, not specifying exactly what because Sholto was still detective enough to guess, and he went to bed.

  THE CHALLAID GAZETTE AND ADVERTISER

  EAR UNITED 2 - 2 CHALLAID FC

  SPFL Premier League Union Park – Att: 34,988

  It began as expected, and for eighty minutes it looked like Challaid were heading for a typical derby tale in this lunchtime fixture. A comfortable lead, holding on until the end, leaving the home of their bitter rivals with three more points. But the last seven minutes of football turned a mediocre match into a classic, and reminded everyone of the power of the Union Park crowd.

  The match began in an atmosphere of noise and hate, the small away crowd drowned out, but not for long. The warning signs for Ear were flashing as early as the eighth minute, when Casper Foster flapped madly at a corner and was fortunate to see the ball fall to Challaid centre-half Havard Prek at the back post only for the Norwegian to blaze it high over. The young keeper, yet another product of the club’s academy, has been in fine form this season, but this was not a game he’ll remember fondly. The crowd got nervous and that translated to the pitch, where mistakes became abundant and good football was substituted for blood and thunder effort.

  The breakthrough, when it came, was predictable. A run to the by-line from in-form winger Florent Albert who fizzed a cross in to the front post where Arthur Samba met it with a diving header to open the scoring. Questions can and will be asked about the defending, and a young keeper beaten at his near post, but none are being asked about Samba. The £2.8 million fee paid for the Englishman, top of the scoring charts with 27 in 31 league games, continues to look like the bargain of the season.

  With the crowd quietening and Challaid dominating possession the second goal was no surprise when it came. This one was all about Samba, taking possession, beating two men and driving the bal
l low into the corner of the net from twenty yards. Two minutes before half-time and a team known for their stifling defence was two goals in front.

  As the second half wore on the game became a classic example of the two teams’ styles. Ear playing at a high tempo, crunching into tackles and picking up five bookings, without creating a single meaningful chance. For all the buzz about the derby game, this was heading for typical disappointment for Ear, who have won only two of the last ten derbies against their richer rivals. Now the Challaid fans were making themselves heard, revelling in what looked like three more points in their championship charge.

  In the eighty-third minute the game changed. Ear created their first clear chance of the game when Pataki Bozsik won the ball in the centre circle and played a perfectly weighted ball through for the onrunning Feliks Brozek to slip it under the keeper and into the net. 2-1 and the crowd were back in the game, the momentum behind their side. Their screaming encouragement, wordless and loud, pushed the side forward in wave after wave of attack, the Challaid defence holding firm until the ninety-first minute. A long ball from keeper Foster, allowed to bounce by the defence, and a half-volley from much-maligned Costa Rican international striker Joel Cayasso had Ear level.

  In truth, a point in an away derby is not a bad result for Challaid, and although it was the home fans that left the happier, staying to the end to a man, Ear needed the three points more. The draw moves them up to third in the table, a point ahead of Rangers, but Challaid move four points clear of Celtic at the top as they aim for back-to-back title wins.

  38

  IN THE AFTERNOON he drove past the house on Pagall Street just in time to see a couple walk out and get into a car. They had scarves on, Challaid FC colours of red and white, and they were heading for the football. A big derby, big crowd. If anyone was going to follow them it would be across to the game at Union Park in Earmam, clearing the scene for Darian. He spent an hour or so at the office with Sholto, before leaving again in the afternoon.