In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

  ‘I don’t expect you to make stuff up; I just don’t accept that any shipping company that’s ever worked out of this city hasn’t been up to something. I’ve seen that industry and its ways before; I know they’re all playing tricks to bring down their costs, thinking they can pull the wool over the eyes of the goofy landlubbers. You get down there and poke about some more, maybe see if you can get a low-paid and loose-lipped member of staff talking. Be proactive.’

  Darian did as he was told, heading back to the warehouses at the marina. He didn’t try to make contact with a member of staff, just drank coffee and watched the old brick buildings to pass the time. In the late afternoon he went back to the office and wrote another report that turned doing nothing into three hundred words before he took the Skoda round to Sgàil Drive.

  Maeve opened the door and quickly said, ‘I’m glad you’re here, I’ve...’

  She stopped when she saw the look on his face. She held the door open and they went through to the living area. They sat opposite each other and Maeve looked hard at him, waiting for Darian to explain the angry and miserable expression.

  He said, ‘I had a long night last night. I thought I was making progress, found someone that was connected to Moses and might have had knowledge about his killing, but it all fell apart in my hands. Corey showed up, took me for a drive, made a bundle of threats that he dressed up as valuable life lessons.’

  Maeve was silent for a few seconds. ‘You found someone who might know what happened to Moses?’

  ‘I thought I did. An accountant that was involved in handling a lot of dirty money and might have been a link in the chain tied round Moses’s money. I found her through Gallowglass, he was hassling this woman. I thought the connection might just have been to Corey, a chance to take a swing at the corrupt bastard, but it grew legs. Then it ran off a cliff. The accountant, she was working with Corey all along, I think. Made me look stupid, and I suppose that was the point. Gave Corey the chance to laugh in my face and warn me about sticking my nose into his business, lean on her at the same time. She said Corey’s trying to force her to hand over all the dirty money she has, he said that was bullshit, but I don’t know. He did say that he agrees Cummins didn’t kill Moses, and that he’s going to keep working the case to try to find the person he should have found long ago. That should be good news, I suppose, if I believed a word of it or trusted him to conduct an honest investigation. At this stage he’s just looking for ways to shut down everyone else’s questions and escape with the cash.’

  ‘You must have rattled him into action.’

  ‘Nah, if he is going to keep looking for the killer it’s not because of anything I did.’

  ‘No, I mean, you’re not the only one that had an unwelcome warning. I was going to tell you when you came in; I had a visit early this morning. It was before eight o’clock, I stumbled out of bed and answered the door and there was DC MacDuff, looking a whole flock of sheepish.’

  Darian remembered when he had turned up unexpectedly and Maeve had opened the door, wearing nothing but a T-shirt. He could understand the sheepishness. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He said he knew I had been asking questions about the police investigation and that it was hampering their ongoing efforts. Tried to make it sound like official police speak rather than a weak thug’s threat. I told him I thought there were no ongoing efforts, that’s why I was still asking questions. He didn’t know how to answer that. I could tell he’d been sent here to speak someone else’s words that his tongue isn’t forked enough to handle and once he had to think for himself he was stumped. He said I should stop what I was doing because I was putting both myself and the investigation in danger, which I think was supposed to be his hardman act, but he sounded like he didn’t believe it himself. Then he asked me to tell him everything I had found out about Moses’ killing so far.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course not. I told him the reason I was asking questions myself was because I couldn’t trust him with the answers in the first place. Then I told him to leave and he did, faster than a confident man should. He was just following orders, although you can still prosecute a man for that. He didn’t scare me, but the phone call I got not long after he left was more effective. A man, local accent, telling me it was time to stop asking questions and hanging out with people that were going to get me into trouble. By which I think he meant you, incidentally.’

  ‘How long after MacDuff left?’

  ‘Just long enough for him to tell this person I hadn’t been as cooperative as they would have liked so needed to be leaned on by someone with a little more grunt.’

  ‘It must have been Gallowglass, must have been.’

  ‘I’ve never heard him before, I don’t know. He sounded like he was a lot more comfortable playing the part of grand thug than MacDuff.’

  Darian looked at her and sighed. He was complicit in dragging this woman into something dangerous, even if her tendency was to walk towards the threat.

  He said, ‘I’m worried about how aggressive they’re getting. I think they know who killed Moses and I think they’re involved in protecting that person. Corey is dangerous. If he’s going to run with the money then he’s desperate, and that makes him more dangerous than usual.’

  She got up and walked across to sit next to him. ‘Well, I knew that from the first conversation I had with the bastard. He carries his nastiness in the open with him. I’m not scared of him, but I’m scared you might stop helping me with this.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  They were face to face, an inch apart. They kissed, Maeve put her hand up to his face, and they pulled apart. She hugged him tightly again and said, ‘I know I can trust you. Will you stay here tonight?’

  They kissed again and Maeve led him through to the bedroom.

  43

  DARIAN WAS IN no hurry to leave in the morning and Maeve was in no hurry to let him. They spent a couple of hours together that we don’t need to describe in excruciating detail. Let’s leave it at the fact that they were a young couple who had just kicked down the thin fence that had been holding them apart since they’d first met and they were, understandably, full of imaginative and exhausting ideas about what to do with each other.

  Eventually he left because he was contractually obliged to get to work. Had to stop at a petrol station on the way to fill up the Skoda, which was more expensive than he had been hoping for and more than the car was worth. He drove home to change and shower and then went round to Cage Street. Sholto was there long before him, and didn’t try to hide his annoyance.

  ‘You know this job isn’t optional.’

  Darian said, ‘I’m here, and I’ve been working long hours, late into the night.’

  ‘Is that what you were doing last night, working?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Maeve Campbell?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, if you’re not sure either it wasn’t much of a night or it was a hell of a night. We need to talk about that girl, I told you that already. We need to have a good, long, detailed, angry conversation about her, but before we do that we need to have an even longer one about Uisdean Kotkell.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was actually hoping you’d be able to start it because I have nothing. We need to make some sort of progress instead of running down more dead ends. It won’t be long before Durell Kotkell is phoning in a huff wanting an update and I don’t have half a sentence to say to the man.’

  ‘You could tell him to ask his son. We know Uisdean is holding something back, holding a lot back maybe, so point the finger in that direction.’

  ‘That’s not what he wants to hear so it’s not what I want to tell him.’

  They sat at their desks and they talked through everything they’d learned so far, a tactic Sholto swore by. In his mind it got them thinking of all the little details, got them talking to each other about things they’d noticed that they might not have mentioned before, the subtle hi
nts they thought they’d picked up along the way. Darian was happy to talk about the Kotkell family rather than Maeve, so he kept the conversation going.

  He said, ‘What I find strangest of all is the fact that he didn’t sack us when we upset him. You saw how annoyed he was, didn’t you?’

  ‘I saw. I remember everyone who’s ever complained about me. I need a good memory.’

  ‘It would have been easy enough for him to cancel the contract and go and hire Raven instead, but he didn’t.’

  ‘Maybe he knows what a shower of piss that lot are.’

  ‘I hardly think that would bother him. He works with worse people than them every day of his life, not least himself. Maybe he didn’t sack us because he thought we were doing the right thing, even if he didn’t like it. Us questioning his son like that, upsetting him, it showed we were willing to do the dirty work. He liked that. But we weren’t on the right track and he knew that, too. He’s convinced it wasn’t random otherwise he wouldn’t be pushing us this hard, and he already knew it had nothing to do with Uisdean’s private life.’

  ‘Are you implying that the father shares the son’s habit of holding back information that would tell us what happened?’

  ‘Why did he hire us, rather than Raven, in the first place? Raven handle contracts for Sutherland, don’t they?’

  Sholto tutted at the gaudy sums of money his rivals were making from that and said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to go and hire them. He’s probably met all their senior investigators before. Instead he came out of his way to get us.’

  ‘It might just be that he heard we’re good at our work.’

  Darian didn’t look at all convinced. ‘Might be, might not. Did he say who had recommended us?’

  ‘I think he might have said it was a cop the first time he called, I don’t really remember. He wasn’t what you would call keen to give me details, just orders.’

  Darian got up and went out of the office, fishing his phone from his pocket. He stood on the stairs, sure that no one could hear him, and phoned DC Cathy Draper. Took a little while for her to answer, but she did. They hadn’t spoken since they’d met at the record store to talk about Corey and the Moses investigation.

  ‘Cathy, do you remember if you spoke to Durell Kotkell, his son got beaten up outside Himinn a wee while back?’

  ‘Yeah, I spoke to him. I think it was the morning after it happened. He was looking to hire someone in and I suggested you and your boss instead of his usual people.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t want anyone that was connected to the bank, I don’t think. When I mentioned you two he asked if you had any connections to Corey, and I said not good ones, you had stood up to him already and he didn’t like you for it. I figured he wouldn’t hire you because of that.’

  ‘Oh. Well, he did.’

  ‘Good, that’s another favour you owe me.’

  ‘I’m really not sure it is, you’ve dropped a nightmare on our heads and we’re struggling to wake up. Anyway, thanks, Cathy.’

  Darian went back into the office. ‘Kotkell hired us after hearing we’d stood up to Corey. You know I’ve been digging around in the Corey stuff, right?’

  Sholto nodded and grimaced at the same time, making him look like he’d swallowed a spider that was trying to crawl back out.

  ‘Well, I know that Corey was connected to an accountant called Moira Slight and I know she was connected to Moses Guerra. What I don’t know is what companies those two were using to filter money through. I think I might just have worked out the answer. We need to go round and see Kotkell.’

  44

  DARIAN KNOCKED ON the door of the posh house in Barton and the unseen dog started barking again. Sholto took a step back and then straightened his tie, wanting to look presentable for when the posh dog bit him. He said, ‘This is a bad idea.’

  Darian said, ‘This is the only idea we’ve got.’

  ‘I wish we were smarter.’

  The door opened and Leala Kotkell looked back at them, her face falling into an expression designed to let them know there would be zero effort on her part to play the polite host, the bridge to her good books had already been burned. She said, ‘What do you two want now?’

  Darian said, ‘We’d like to speak to your husband or your son or both.’

  ‘They’re not in.’

  ‘That so? Uisdean must be feeling a lot better if he’s gone from stifling headaches after one conversation to out and about already. What we’ll do then is we’ll wait while you call one or both of them and tell them we’re here. We can wait out on the street if you’d like.’

  If looks were weapons she could have held the world to ransom with the one she gave Darian, but he just smiled back in response. She didn’t want them out on the street where the neighbours might see them so she reluctantly let them in, Sholto nodding apologetically as they went through to the same study they’d been in before.

  Leala Kotkell stood in the doorway and said, ‘Stay there and don’t touch anything.’

  Darian sat heavily but Sholto stayed standing, already sweating and looking around the room, glancing often at the doorway as if he was afraid the now silent dog might be planning to creep up on him. He said, ‘I bet she’s giving the dog our scent right now, telling it to chew us to pieces.’

  ‘She might be telling her husband that, but I doubt she’s telling the dog. If she knew you were as scared of the dog as you are of the husband she might.’

  ‘I’m not terrified of the whole dog, just its teeth.’

  Darian thought, when they were quiet, that he could hear her voice from another room, trying to talk quietly but her volume rising in anger every few seconds and betraying her. He said, ‘She’s on the phone.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have forced our way in like this, it’s just antagonising them more.’

  ‘It’s now or never.’

  ‘And what if we’re wrong about this?’

  ‘Then it’s never again.’

  ‘Aye, well, the way my wee heart’s pumping away right now it might be never again for me anyway. When I started this business it was supposed to be police work without the pressure. No murderers or madmen to catch, just good old pilferers and runaways, simple follow the breadcrumbs stuff. I could always do those. Maybe Corey was right about me, hiding from the serious stuff.’

  ‘If he was right you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Maybe he was right and I’m just too lazy to prove it.’

  Leala had been silent for a couple of minutes and Sholto was still pacing when a figure emerged in the doorway. Uisdean Kotkell stood looking at them, not saying anything at first. Sholto sat down on the couch just as Darian stood up and said, ‘Come in, Uisdean, sit down. There’s just one question I want to ask you.’

  Uisdean looked like he was considering the offer when they heard Leala’s voice from the other end of the long corridor, shouting to her son. ‘Uisdean, what are you doing?’

  She appeared beside him in the doorway and Darian said, ‘Look who showed up. I really just need to ask him one question.’

  ‘He’s not fit for it; he needs to be resting in his bed.’

  ‘That’s a remarkable deterioration; a minute ago you said he was out and about.’

  Leala glared at Darian, but Uisdean said, ‘If it’s just one question.’

  He walked across to the opposite couch and sat on it, his mother sitting beside him. Darian sat back down beside Sholto and said, ‘Uisdean, when Randulf Gallowglass beat you up, what message did he give you for your father?’

  Leala turned her head to the side and Uisdean stared straight at Darian for a second before he said, ‘He told me to tell my father that it was time to do what he was told, and that if he didn’t he’d come after me again.’

  ‘And you told your father this?’

  Leala put up a hand. ‘My husband is on his way, he won’t be more than another five minutes. You can ask hi
m.’

  Sholto said, ‘Five minutes? Bloody hell, what road is he driving on?’

  His attempt to inject a little humour was met by steely looks from the Kotkell family opposite and his smile crumpled. Leala bundled Uisdean out of the room, wanting to protect him from any more outbursts of honesty. He already knew more than he should about his father’s work. It was four minutes later that a car stopped with a small squeak of tyres outside and Durell Kotkell burst in.

  ‘What’s going on now?’

  Darian stood up and said, ‘Why did you hire us when you don’t have any desire to see the man who attacked your son being brought to justice? You don’t want Gallowglass put away; you don’t want Corey in the dock because you’d end up next to him.’

  Kotkell straightened and held eye contact with Darian. Huffily, he said, ‘Well, shit, you’ve got the wrong end of the right stick. Took you long enough to get this far. I hired you because I knew it was Corey and I knew the police would never get off their backsides and do something about that man, no matter how much pressure I put on them. They close ranks. I do want Corey in the dock, but it’ll never happen, not with that one, but I want him to know he doesn’t get away scot-free. Attacking my son. My son. I wasn’t letting that go unchecked, so I brought you in to put some pressure on him.’

  ‘Because he’s been using you to clean dirty money.’

  Kotkell shook his head. ‘It’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that. He hasn’t been using me, but I run the department at the bank that handles Caledonian accounts, business accounts mostly, the majority in Panama. That bastard’s dirty money goes into a clean company that then runs it through us, it looks like Panamanian money so those are the tax rules we apply. An accountant called Moira Slight was the link, she took money that had been picked up here and banked it through us under the names of clean companies. We put the last sheen of respectability on it, but we were just at the end, I don’t know who was involved earlier in the chain. Hiding money is a lot harder than it used to be and a lot of the young banks run scared from it these days. When I found out it had been going through my department, well, shit, heads rolled, I’ll tell you that.’