by Alex Walters
He dialled the number, and after a moment, the call was answered. At first, all McKay could hear was an incomprehensible roar. He held the phone away from his ear, assuming here was some technical problem with the line. Then, he heard a voice say, ‘Alec? That you?’
‘Craig. Where the hell are you?’
‘Where do you think I am? At the Caley.’
‘They’re playing tonight?’
‘You know nothing? Celtic tonight. Just about to kick off.’ Fairlie was shouting to make himself heard above the crowd.
‘Not my thing, football. You know that.’
‘Long time, no hear, Alec. What can I do for you?’
‘It’s maybe not really the time to try to explain. But I’m looking for a favour.’
‘Ach, well, that figures. You never call, you never write –’
McKay and Fairlie went back to university days. They’d been good mates at the time. They didn’t see much of each other now, but both had ended up living in Inverness, and they got on well enough when they met. Fairlie had become a journalist and found himself what he described as the least secure job on earth as a reporter on the local paper. They’d done each other a few favours over the years – Fairlie had dug out some bits of useful information for McKay, and McKay had occasionally given Fairlie early notice of some impending story in return. Nothing untoward – McKay was always scrupulous about that – but enough to keep Fairlie onside.
‘How far back do your archives go?’
‘Dunno exactly. Far enough. What are you looking for?’
‘Stories from about twenty years ago. Would that be possible?’
‘Aye, I should think so. Everything should be available either electronically or on microfiche, I imagine. We’re gradually digitising everything, but it’s a slow process.’
‘Would I be able to have a look?’
‘Aye, of course. It’s theoretically open to the public anyway, but we tend not to advertise the fact.’
‘Wouldn’t mind picking your brains, too, if you can spare me a few minutes.’
‘For you, Alec, anything. Cost you a pint or two, mind. How about tomorrow morning? I’ll be in the office, barring any local catastrophes.’ He paused, the crowd still loud behind him. ‘Alec?’
‘Aye?’
‘You going to give me some gen on this latest story? These ex-coppers?’
‘That’s a very long story,’ McKay said, imagining how Grant would react if she knew he was even making this phone call. ‘I can’t afford to step out of line.’
‘That right? Things have changed, then.’
‘Ach, I’ll tell you what I can tomorrow. Thanks, Craig.’
‘No bother.’ Behind Fairlie’s voice, the roar of the crowd was increasing. ‘I’d better go. They’re kicking off.’
‘I’ll leave you to your pain then.’
‘Don’t you start taking the piss, pal –’ There was a pause, and then more crowd noise. ‘Shit.’
‘What is it?’
‘We’ve only sodding conceded already, that’s what.’
37
McKay wasn’t sure whether he felt better or worse for having contacted Fairlie. Better, in that at least he was doing something. Worse, in that he really should be doing anything other than sticking his nose back into the investigation. Fairlie would be discreet, but it wouldn’t take much for word to get back to Helena Grant.
Ach. He was what he was. He couldn’t help himself. Grant knew that better than most. If he got himself suspended or even sacked, well, that was how it would be.
Still restless, he took another sip of the beer and picked up the phone again. Okay, Alec, he told himself, if you’re so fucking impulsive, just dial the number. Dial it.
He hesitated a moment longer, then flicked through the phone’s address book until he found the entry still labelled, poignantly enough, “HOME.”
The landline rang out until it clicked to voicemail. McKay ended the call. He wouldn’t have known what message to leave. She was out, then. Maybe back at her sister’s. Maybe doing something more enjoyable. Perhaps, after all these years, Chrissie had decided the single life was for her and was making the most of it. Or, worse still, maybe she was already looking to bring her temporary single status to an end.
McKay was on his way into the kitchen to fetch another beer when he heard the mobile buzzing on the table behind him. He picked it up and looked at the screen. HOME.
‘Chrissie?’
‘That you, Alec?’
‘Aye, who else?’ He could feel himself slipping back into their old sparring ways. ‘I just tried to call you.’
‘Aye, I know, you numpty. That’s why I’m calling you back.’
‘I thought you were out.’
‘Where would I be going out to?’ she said. ‘I’ve just got a bit nervous about answering the phone at night.’
McKay felt a chill finger run down his spine. ‘Nervous? Why nervous?’
‘Since I’ve been back here, I’ve had a few odd calls,’ she said.
‘In what way odd? Threatening?’
‘No. Not as such. Just silent.’
‘That’s those autodial things. Cold calling. You know. Just dial loads of numbers but they don’t always connect –’
‘This isn’t like that, Alec. There’s someone there. I can tell.’
‘How often have you had these calls?’
‘I don’t know. A few times. It’s always the evening. That’s why when you phoned –’
‘No, of course. There’s not been one tonight, then?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Do you want me to report it? See if we can get the call traced?’ The chances of tracking down the caller were minimal, he knew. ‘Assume it’s one of those “number withheld” calls?’
‘Seems to be,’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’m making a fuss about nothing.’
‘It probably is nothing,’ he said, doing his best to sound reassuring. ‘But it’s making you nervous. We should do something about it.’
He was thinking about Chrissie rattling around in that empty house. If someone did want to harm him, it wouldn’t be that difficult to get hold of his address, even though he dutifully followed all the usual security protocols associated with being a police officer. That someone, whoever it might be, maybe didn’t even realise he wasn’t still living there.
Or, he added silently to himself, might know fine well he wasn’t there.
‘I’ll get someone to look into it,’ he said. He had a decent security set-up back at the house – again, the need for it went with the territory – but like any domestic security, it had its vulnerabilities. If someone knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t be difficult to penetrate.
‘Well, if you really think it’s necessary.’ She sounded irritated rather than reassured. They’d only been on the phone for five minutes, and already he’d started to play his familiar “white knight” role, bounding in to save the poor wee vulnerable woman. All he’d really done was give her more cause for concern. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you, Alec?’ It was the voice he could imagine her deploying in her days as a medical receptionist.
‘I just thought we ought to talk.’
‘We’re talking, Alec. Do you have anything much to say?’
‘I –’ It was no good, he thought. They were back into it. The same old routine. ‘We need to talk properly, Chrissie. Sit down and really talk through what the problems are. Try and work it out.’
‘Do you think there’s any point, Alec?’
‘I don’t know. We need to give it a shot.’
‘I don’t think I’m ready for it, Alec. Look, I’m prepared to give it a go. There’s too much between us to let it drift away without trying. But not yet. I need to get my head together. Need to think through properly what I need to say. Otherwise, we’ll fall back into the same rut.’
‘Maybe we need someone else to help. Some third party.’
‘Aye, and that worked out so well last t
ime, didn’t it?’
‘That wasn’t –’
‘I know. Rather unusual circumstances. And, yes, you might be right. But I think we maybe need to try to talk to each other first.’
‘Whenever you want.’
‘Give me a few days, Alec. Maybe not even that. Just time to think about it. I’ll call you. Okay?’
There was nothing else he could say. ‘Okay.’
She ended the call without saying goodbye. So where did that leave them? It felt like a step forward. Or maybe two steps forward and one back. Some sort of progress, anyway.
He ought to feel pleased. But, more than anything, he was feeling anxious. Thinking of her there in that otherwise empty house. Thinking of who might be on the end of those silent phone calls, and what it might be they wanted.
Thinking of the relentless grip that had tightened around his own neck just twenty-four hours before.
‘You’re sure about it?’
‘Not remotely. But I don’t know what else to do.’
‘I’ve told you. Ignore him. If he carries on pestering you, get a restraining order.’
They’d finished eating and were back in the living room, the wine bottle half empty.
‘I can’t carry on like this,’ Horton said. ‘I need to find a way to bring it to an end.’
‘He’ll be back. You know that, don’t you? You’ll have given him what he wants. So, he’ll just know he can still manipulate you. He might leave you alone for a while. But he’ll be back.’
‘Even so –’ They’d been round this loop half a dozen times over the meal. Horton wanted to make contact with David in the way he’d suggested. Isla thought that, given that Ginny Horton was an intelligent woman, this was the world’s stupidest idea.
‘I’m not going to stop you, though, am I?’ Isla said finally. ‘You’re going to go ahead and do it, whatever I say.’
‘Look, tomorrow’s Friday. What if we offer to meet him after work in one of the bars in the city centre? The place will be busy. There’ll be no way he can do anything – inappropriate. If he starts playing up, we get him thrown out. How does that sound?’
‘Idiotic,’ Isla said. ‘What he does then isn’t the point. The point is that you’ll have given him what he wants. He’ll have won. Again.’
‘It’s not about winning and losing –’
‘It is for him. That’s the man he is.’ Isla took a breath. ‘But I can see you’re not going to be happy ‘til you’ve done it. And I can’t say I blame you. If I were in your shoes, I’d probably do the same.’
‘Tomorrow, then. About six?’
‘Okay, I can be away by then. You come to the office, and we’ll head over there together. I don’t want any risk you’ll have to deal with him on your own, even for a few minutes.’
‘Fine by me. I’ve no desire to spend any time alone with him.’
Horton couldn’t bring herself to call David back. Instead, she sent a text to the number saying she was prepared to meet him in the Black Isle Brewery Bar in Inverness. She’d be there at six p.m. with Isla. If David didn’t turn up then, he’d have missed the only chance she was prepared to give him.
Two minutes after she’d texted, the phone began to ring. The same number.
‘You’re not going to answer it?’ Isla said.
‘Christ, no.’ They both stared at the buzzing phone until it fell silent. ‘Jesus, he knows how to scare the shit out of me, doesn’t he?’
‘Of course he does,’ Isla said. ‘That’s the point.’
A moment later, the phone buzzed again. The sound of an incoming text. Horton picked up the phone, holding it between them so they could both read the screen.
“See you there,” it said.
38
‘You okay, Ginny?’
Horton blinked at the sunlight streaming in through the office window. ‘Sorry. Was completely lost in this lot.’ She waved her hand at the mass of files accumulated on her desk.
Helena Grant lowered herself on to the seat opposite Horton’s desk, looking with slight trepidation at the unsteady tower of box files. ‘You do realise you might literally get buried under paperwork?’
‘It’s a dangerous job, but someone’s got to do it.’ Horton had volunteered to work through Galloway and his team’s final cases at that morning’s planning session, without mentioning her conversation with Alec McKay. It was an obvious line of investigation in any case, though no one had seemed very keen to take it on. Probably, she reflected now, because it was among the most boring tasks imaginable.
The material was all archived, and when she’d first called the records unit, Horton had expected it would take some days to retrieve the files. But the unit head had seemed only too keen to oblige. ‘We all want to see this one sorted,’ she’d said. ‘It’ll probably take us a day or so to pull out all the records, but we can send them over to you as we go, so you can make a start.’ Sure enough, later in the morning, the first couple of crates had been delivered to her office.
‘Any luck so far?’ Grant asked.
‘Nothing obvious. It’s like you’d expect. Most of the cases are routine stuff, especially twenty-odd years after the event. Stabbings and fights in the city centre on a Saturday night. Domestics. The individuals involved are all small-time. I can’t see there’s anyone or anything in here that might come back to bite Galloway or the others two decades later. Mind you, I’ve plenty more to go through. And I’ve been promised a couple of other crates to come.’
‘Lucky you. Do you want me to find some more resource to help?’
‘I’ll see how it goes. But it might be better to stick with one person doing it. There might be links or patterns that tell us something.’
‘Maybe,’ Grant said. ‘And, of course, it might be that none of this has anything to do with a specific investigation. Might have been more about what Galloway was up to behind the scenes.’
‘But you’d expect some sign of it somewhere. If it was anything dodgy, I mean.’
‘Galloway was always good at covering his tracks. And we don’t know that it was necessarily dodgy. Maybe, for once, Galloway managed to make the wrong enemy for the right reasons.’ She paused. ‘Though, frankly, that doesn’t sound like the Jackie Galloway I remember.’
Horton nodded. ‘Even from these files, reading between the lines, I get the impression of a nasty piece of work. Some of the interviews just sound too neat, you know?’
‘Aye, I know,’ Grant said. ‘He was pretty adept at getting the answer he wanted.’
‘I had a look at that last case of his. The drugs bust that went wrong.’
‘Must have made interesting reading, even after all this time.’
‘Very interesting,’ Horton said. ‘There’s nothing on the file about Galloway’s disciplinary hearing. Assume that’s all held confidentially somewhere?’
‘It was handled by the Complaints Commissioner, so they’ll have all the files. We may need to get access to them.’
‘Seemed an odd one, even more than Alec said. Galloway’s original statement reckoned he hadn’t seen where the knife had come from or who’d stabbed the victim, but that he wasn’t responsible.’
‘That was Galloway all over,’ Grant said. ‘He was never responsible.’
‘It was one of the others – Crawford, I think – who said that Galloway was grappling with the young man over the knife. He described it fairly neutrally – that the young man was stabbed in the course of the struggle. But the stories didn’t tally.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Grant said. ‘Could have been either or both of them. Or Graham. All more than capable of shafting each other. You think the key to this might lie there somewhere?’
Horton shifted uneasily. ‘In principle, I suppose it could. These were people trying to muscle into the city drug circuit. Alec reckoned that Galloway had been tipped off by one of his dubious friends. So, all that might have got up the wrong person’s nose, especially with the way it turned out. But my i
mpression from the file is that these guys were low-life chancers, not big players.’
‘Or maybe,’ Grant said thoughtfully, ‘somebody used this as an opportunity to bring down Galloway. If so, it worked.’
‘There’s one other thing,’ Horton said, after a pause.
‘Go on.’
‘I had a call from Alec last night.’ She’d been considering not telling Grant this, but was feeling increasingly uncomfortable holding back the information, however trivial it might prove to be. She could almost see Grant stiffen in her seat at the mention of McKay’s name.
‘Oh, aye,’ Grant said. ‘And what did Alec want?’
‘He ran into Bridie Galloway yesterday –’
‘Ran into?’ Grant’s voice was icy.
‘Just that, from what he said. It’s a small village. He met her in the corner shop.’
‘Very cosy,’ Grant said. ‘Was she complaining about the price of Tunnock’s Wafers?’
‘She was just encouraging us to look at these last cases.’
‘Well, thanks for the tip, Bridie. Remind me to invite you in as a consultant.’ Grant shook her head. ‘Sorry, shouldn’t take it out on you. Just finding Alec increasingly hard work on this. I’m putting my backside on the line for him as it is.’
‘He knows that,’ Horton said. ‘But this is Alec’s life.’
Grant sighed. ‘Aye, I know. He must feel he’s lost everything. First, his daughter. Then, Chrissie and his home. Now, it must feel like even his job’s slipping away. But that’s why he’s got to behave himself. Anyway, what about Bridie Galloway? Was that all she said?’
‘No. That’s the point. She said that Jackie Galloway had changed, even before that last case. That he seemed anxious about something. Frightened, even.’
‘Galloway never struck me as the type to be easily frightened.’
‘That’s the impression I’ve gained.’
‘Maybe he’d got on the wrong side of someone. It’s needle in a haystack territory, though, isn’t it? But I suppose those case files are as good a place to start as anywhere.’