When we finished I knew that things were going to be difficult for a while, but that they were going to be a hell of a lot better too.
Mark and Jazz came out to join us. We chose teams, two-a-side, youngest against the oldest, and I made sure that Seonaid won. That wasn’t difficult; Mark can beat the world at any game on computer, but put him on grass and he’s rubbish, bless him. Once the sun had climbed a little higher, I decided that we’d all go to the beach, not the busy one that we can see from the house, but the secluded one. Gay people, men mostly, are known to go there sometimes for the peace and quiet to which they’re entitled. There was a time a few decades back when my force used to give them a hard time. That doesn’t happen on my watch, and anyone else who considers pestering them finds out very quickly that it’s a bad idea.
As I sat on the edge of the dunes and watched the kids play, I began to imagine a day when I wouldn’t have to bring my two mobiles with me, or even one of them, when it would be them, me, and nobody else. It might not need imagination in the not too distant future, I realised, if the legislators had their way with the best interests of our nation.
‘Retaliation in first,’ I whispered, feeling a grin spread across my face. Compulsory or not, mobiles can be useful. I dug my personal one out, scrolled through my phone book till I reached ‘S’ and dialled the number I’d been after.
‘Editor’s office,’ a voice chirped.
‘Mrs Crampsey, please. Tell her it’s the chief constable.’
June Crampsey has been managing editor of the Saltire newspaper since Xavi Aislado, her predecessor and its co-owner, took himself off to Spain about ten years ago. She and I get on well, and I’ve always looked after her, for three reasons: Xavi is a mate, her dad is a retired police officer and she’s a bloody brilliant journalist.
‘Bob,’ she said as she came on line. ‘What have we done wrong?’
‘You’ve almost missed out on a bloody good story,’ I told her. ‘Your Glasgow rival is running it tomorrow. It’s all about a secret political pact to turn Scotland into a police state.’
‘What?’ she exclaimed.
‘Okay,’ I chuckled, ‘that might be a slight overstatement, but given the wrong hands on the tiller at Holyrood, the potential is there. This is what it’s all about.’
I spent the next twenty minutes briefing her on what was happening, and giving her my view of it. Most of it was directly quotable; the rest of it, the more florid phrases and the direct attacks on the First Minister and Aileen, was for attribution to ‘a senior police source’. The world would guess it was me, but June would never confirm it.
We were both slightly breathless when we were done. ‘I owe you one, Bob,’ June said.
‘I might take you up on that,’ I replied. ‘I might need a job soon.’
‘Any time.’ I believe she meant it. ‘When can I put it on our online edition?’ she asked.
‘Any time after seven thirty this evening. My wife and the First Minister will be at a concert in Glasgow this evening. I’d like to ruin their half-time cocktails. It wouldn’t do either of us any harm if you fed it to the broadcast media at that time also.’
‘Will do. I must get in touch with Xavi,’ she added. ‘He’s going to love this.’
As I ended the call, Mark wandered across. He’s a perceptive kid; misses nothing, except for any ball he ever takes a swing at. ‘What are you doing, Dad?’ he asked.
‘Crossing the Rubicon,’ I told him, as I slipped my phone back into its pouch on the strap of my knapsack.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Doing something that you can’t go back on. The Rubicon’s a river in Italy: in ancient Roman times if you crossed it with an army, it was a declaration of war on the state. Julius Caesar did.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Nothing. He won.’
He frowned. ‘Will you win?’ he murmured.
I smiled, reached out and ruffled his hair. ‘I have done already, son. I’ve done what I believe to be right. If I hadn’t, that would have been a defeat.’
I rose and we walked towards the receding tide, out to the spot that James Andrew had chosen for his latest sand sculpture. He was working away, in spite of, rather than with, his sister’s assistance.
‘Can you tell what it is yet?’ he asked as we approached.
‘You sound just like Rolf Harris,’ I told him.
He stared at me. ‘Who’s Rolf Harris?’
Wrong generation, Bob. ‘A very famous man,’ I said, lamely.
‘Does he build sandcastles?’
‘Probably.’
I dug four drinks from my bag and handed them round, then gave each of the kids a banana, Seonaid’s favourite food since she’s been old enough to stuff one in her mouth. I cast an eye over Jazz’s work in progress. ‘A car,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be a car.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘What kind?’
‘That’s beyond me.’
‘Like Alex’s,’ he revealed, proudly. ‘With the roof down.’
His older sister had acquired a new convertible coupe, to celebrate her assumption as a partner in her firm. It could only have been her car that he would have chosen.
‘How long can we stay, Daddy?’ Seonaid asked.
I checked my watch. I’d told Trish we’d be back at one; that gave us more than two hours. ‘At the very least,’ I declared, ‘until you’ve had a test drive in your big brother’s car. If you come for a paddle with me, maybe the boys will be able to finish it faster.’
She didn’t see the logic in that, but she took my hand as we walked towards the water’s edge. ‘I like it when you’re home, Daddy,’ she said, looking up at me.
‘I like it too. I promise that I’ll spend more time at home from now on.’
Tempting fate is always a bad idea; when you do it with your kids it’s criminal. My daughter had barely put a toe in the water before my police phone rang. ‘Bugger!’ I snarled, quietly. I took a few paces backward as I fished it out of its hiding place. I checked the number before I answered, and recognised it as our force communications centre, our hub.
‘Yes?’ I snapped, unreasonably. ‘Chief Constable.’
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ a woman began. I didn’t believe her. ‘Sergeant Christie here. I’ve got a caller on the line who insists on speaking to you, and to you alone. He says it’s most urgent and the nobody else can deal with it.’
‘Have you told him that wasting police time is an offence and that wasting mine can be positively dangerous?’
‘I’ve done my best to dissuade him, sir,’ Christie assured me, ‘but I felt I had to call you just in case it was genuine. He doesn’t sound nearly old enough, but the caller says he’s your grandfather.’
Jesus, I thought, what next? I took a deep breath to stop myself from roaring abuse at the woman, and as I did, an outside possibility occurred to me.
‘Is that exactly what he said?’ I asked.
‘No, sir, not quite. He said, “Tell him it’s Grandpa.” Those were his exact words.’
‘What a surprise,’ I murmured. ‘Since it’s family you’d better put him through. Understand also, we do not record this call. Got that?’
‘Loud and clear, sir,’ Sergeant Christie assured me.
A moment later, the background noise changed. I waited for another few seconds to ensure that Christie had cleared off, then said, ‘Mr McCullough, I presume.’
‘Yes,’ a voice replied, one I knew from what I’d assumed would be a one-off meeting a few months earlier, ‘it’s me.’
‘I’m not sure I welcome this,’ I told him. ‘I’m on the beach with my kids at the moment, so it’s a wee bit intrusive.’
‘Give them my apologies, won’t you. Mr Skinner, if you think I’d be phoning you without a bloody good reason, then the sea air’s going to your head. I’d an intrusion myself this morning, from my granddaughter, on behalf of her boyfriend.’ The man sounded agitated. That was a surprise;
Cameron McCullough had struck me as a man who was never ruffled.
‘Look,’ he continued, ‘when I sent you that message via young Haddock, it was no more than a goodwill gesture, a sign that I am out of that life and that young Cameron should be allowed to get on with hers.’
‘Mr McCullough,’ this was definitely not someone with whom I’d ever be familiar, ‘you’re out of the life because circumstances made it so. For example, those two brutes who used to do your dirty work are fertilising a cemetery, because they, and you, crossed the wrong man a while back, and there are no obvious replacements available. If you’ve seen the light, it was a police officer who was shining it on you. People like you don’t reform, you do what’s expedient. If you expect me to pass your retirement announcement on to Brian Mackie, the new Tayside chief, or to Andy Martin at the Agency, you’re wasting your time. I’m very happy for young Sauce and Cheeky, but you are still going to be under police scrutiny for the rest of your life, and if you make one slip, you will be put away.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know, man,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m not fucking naive.’
‘Then why are you calling me?’
‘Because this is no longer something I can have our Cameron involved in, or even her lad. It’s dangerous for her and it’s way above his rank and station. This has to be between you and me.’
‘If that’s how you want it. .’
‘It is,’ he insisted. ‘First off, though, are you recording this?’
‘No; I’ve forbidden it, specifically. You have my word on that. But I can’t promise that other agencies aren’t listening in.’
‘I’m secure,’ he retorted sharply. ‘I swept my place this morning and this is a throwaway phone.’
I laughed. ‘This from a man who assures me he’s straight.’
‘I value my privacy, Mr Skinner, in every aspect of my life.’
‘Fair enough. Now go on.’
‘Okay. We’ve established that I tipped you off about Kenny Bass. I did so for the reasons I mentioned a minute ago, but I’ll admit that there was one other. The little bastard really annoyed me. He came to me, in my hotel, and he had the fucking temerity to tell me that he’d moved a load of contraband tobacco into Scotland, too much for him to handle in Edinburgh, and to ask me if I wanted to take some of it off his hands. The bloody cheek of it! Me! Smuggled fags, for Christ’s sake! In my hotel!’ he raged. ‘My legitimate place of business! I turned down his generous offer and I told him to get the fuck down the road and never come back. It niggled me for days afterwards, until finally I thought, fuck it, and decided to sort the pipsqueak out, but do it constructively, if you get my drift.’
‘I get it,’ I told him. ‘Hence your goodwill gesture.’
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘but I had to be careful. I didn’t want to end up on some Edinburgh detective’s informant list; those things can leak out. So I passed the message the way I did. I didn’t expect any thanks for it, mind; I don’t envisage being on the Queen’s honours list any time soon. I didn’t expect to hear any more about it other than a line in the paper saying that Bass had been sent off on holiday. So when our Cameron came to see me this morning, it threw me right off balance.’ He paused. ‘What the fuck do you mean, Skinner, using my granddaughter in that way?’
‘Eh?’ I exclaimed, astonished. ‘You were the one who used her in the first place. . Grandpa.’
‘The hell I did,’ he protested. ‘I just gave her a wee message to pass to her boyfriend to pass to you. I didn’t intend for her to be a conduit for a police investigation, to be carrying a fucking questionnaire from you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Truly sorry. I mean that. There was nothing to stop me sending my head of CID up to see you, with Andy Martin for company. I wish I had now. In fact, I still could. Would you prefer that?’
He got the message. ‘No, no, no,’ he conceded, sharpish. ‘You’re right; you were showing discretion, I suppose. It’s just. . when she mentioned the name Freddy Welsh to me, it set off all sorts of alarm bells.’
‘So you know him?’
‘Yes, but I had no idea that a small-timer like Kenny Bass would have been involved with him.’
‘So what about Welsh?’ I asked. ‘What makes him a man to be feared?’
‘He isn’t. It’s the people he does business with that are.’ He paused, for a few seconds. ‘You really don’t know?’ he murmured. Then he laughed, quietly. ‘You know something, Mr Skinner, you’ve restored my faith in human nature and my belief in the frailty of man. I thought my record might have been in danger, but it’s intact. I’ve still never met a copper who’s as smart as he thinks he is.’
‘I’m under no illusions,’ I told him. ‘People go out of their way to show me how limited I am, so join the list. But bear this in mind; if I’m that fucking stupid I might be reckless enough to name you as the informant in the report that we’re about to make to the Crown Office on Kenny Bass. I’ve got a police officer implicated in this thing, thanks to Mr Welsh, whatever he is, and I’m not pleased. So you be bloody careful whose tail you try to pull. Now, don’t piss me about any further. What do you know about Welsh? You tell me or I’ll have you lifted within the hour and brought to my office. . and yes, there will be photographers outside.’
I’ll swear I heard him growl, like a cornered bear. ‘Okay,’ he murmured, at last, ‘but only for our Cameron’s sake. That’s how this thing started after all. I know Freddy Welsh personally through my main company, the CamMac group. As you’ll know, I’m a developer, building houses, offices, small factories, but I don’t employ a permanent construction workforce. Freddy Welsh is a building contractor, on a reasonable scale. Not huge, but big enough to take on most of the projects I do, or parts of them.’
‘Did you launder money though his business. . when you were in the life, that is?’
‘Hell no. Freddy’s accountant lives up his arse. Little chance of that. No, like mine, Freddy’s company, Anglesey Construction, he calls it, is completely legit. But there’s another side to him. As a young man, Freddy did some military service as a regular; he learned his trade in the army. . he’s an electrician. . and he learned some other stuff too. He did a tour in Ireland, and in Kuwait, and while he was there, he became the battalion armourer. He carried the nickname with him when he left.’
‘What nickname?’
‘The Armourer. That’s what they call him, and that’s what he does. He supplies weapons.’
‘To whom?’ I asked, grammatical to a fault.
‘To anyone who wants to buy them,’ he replied, ‘for whatever purpose.’
‘You mean he’s an arms dealer?’
‘Yes, but not in the way you understand. Let’s say you’re a figure in the other world, and you are planning an operation, an armed robbery, a kidnap for ransom, a hit, anything that needs shooters. It’s a fact of life, that when a gun is fired on a job, it creates a piece of history. It leaves a trace. Jails around the world and death rows in many a place are full of people who either didn’t know that or didn’t take it seriously enough. They use a weapon, they pass it on, someone else gets caught with it, it’s traced back to the original user, and he’s done. Freddy Welsh takes that problem away. His specialty is the supply of weapons that are absolutely clean. Give him a shopping list and he will fill it; he will source what you need. When the job is done, if the customer wants, he will take that weapon back, and he will rebuild it, change its characteristics, whatever, so that effectively it’s become a new firearm all over again. Either that or you use it the once and when you’re done just throw the thing away.’
‘What sort of weapons are we talking about here?’
‘You name it,’ McCullough replied. ‘You want an American Derringer, something you can hide in the palm of your hand yet blow somebody’s brains out, he’ll get you one. You want a heavy machine gun? It’s yours. Gatling gun? Probably. He sources them all from around the world, and he supplies them, cash and carry.’
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‘From where?’
‘Nobody knows. Nobody asks. His product is too good, so nobody ever rocks the boat.’
‘Who are his customers?’
‘Everybody,’ he said, slowly.
‘You mean organised crime?’
‘I mean, everybody. If the CIA decided that you knew too much, they’d probably get the gun that killed you from Freddy. If it’s that serious, he’s where you go. That’s probably why you’ve never heard of him.’
‘Have you ever used him?’
‘Me?’ He chuckled. ‘Please, Mr Skinner, you’d never catch me anywhere near Freddy Welsh other than on a building site.’
‘No,’ I murmured, ‘I don’t suppose I would. Your two deceased associates though, that might have been another matter.’
‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘The book is closed now, okay. You and I, we never meet or speak again, unless of course you and your highly placed wife happen to be guests at one of my hotels some time, and I’m there. If that happens, you can buy me a drink.’
‘Don’t let your life depend on it,’ I told him. I ended the call, put my phone back in its place and sat down on the sand, feeling its dampness seep into my shorts as I watched Seonaid jumping over small retreating waves, and as I pondered.
‘Freddy Welsh,’ I murmured. ‘The Armourer and a second-division smuggler like Kenny Bass. What’s wrong with that picture? Unless. . I wonder what else might have been on Kenny’s truck, apart from those fags,’ I mused aloud, ‘and I wonder how much Jock bloody Varley knew about it. You’re weighed in for this,’ I whispered, quoting Welsh’s words to his wife’s cousin. ‘For what, Jock?’ I asked myself, deciding as I did that nobody but me was going to put that question to Mr Bass, and that ‘No comment’ would not be an acceptable reply.
On another day, I’d have driven straight to Saughton to confront the toerag, but I decided that pleasure could keep for a few hours, while I enjoyed another. I lured Seonaid out of the water with the promise of another banana, and together we rejoined the boys. The car was almost finished; it wasn’t a bad likeness of Alex’s coupe, right down to the kidney grille, even if the upholstery was sand. It had wing mirrors. Mark’s idea, James Andrew explained; built around twigs they had found at the high-water mark, and an improvised steering wheel made from a piece of driftwood.
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