The Gathering Dark

by James Oswald

  ‘Grumpy Bob’s trying to get someone sorted. It’s a pain. I’m not really interested in the stuff we found him with. We can leave that to the drugs squad, let him sweat in the cells a while over it before they get here. What I want to know is where he’s been this past week, and why his DNA record’s been tampered with.’

  McIntyre consulted her watch. ‘It’ll have to wait. I can’t let you in there until the duty solicitor turns up. You’ll have to speak to forensics about the DNA cock-up. We’ll get a swab from him for possession anyway, so that’ll sort itself out.’

  ‘I’m sure that’ll come as great consolation to the team when I go and wipe this wee shite’s name off the board up in the incident room. Thought we’d got everyone.’

  ‘You’ll find your last dead person soon enough, Tony. He’s on the database, after all.’

  McLean looked round at McIntyre as if she was mad. ‘How’d you figure that?’

  ‘Well, think about it. We got a hit from the sample Angus took off the body. It matches someone, just not Pothead Sammy here.’ McIntyre nodded at the figure, now picking his nose and tasting what he found up there. ‘All we need to do is find out whose sample got mislabelled and you’ll have your name.’

  If only it were that easy. There were a hundred and one reasons why a DNA sample might have been corrupted on the database, and only half of them were likely to be down to human or computer error. What if the cover-up of Eric Forrester’s drug addiction had included tampering with any DNA sample taken when he was arrested for possession? Sammy was another Helensburgh lad, well known to the police over there, possibly even arrested at the same time as Forrester. Someone with high enough clearance or the right connections might well have been able to mess about with the system. And swapping a file was much less suspicious than simply deleting it.

  McLean opened his mouth to say as much, but the door to the observation room clicked open. Grumpy Bob stuck his head through the gap.

  ‘That’s the duty solicitor just showed up, sir. I’ll give them ten minutes, aye?’

  McLean looked back round to the glass, where DC Harrison was showing a very young man in a dark suit and tie into the interview room. Either he was getting old or solicitors were qualifying early these days.

  ‘Aye, ten minutes’ll be fine. Then we can have a nice wee chat.’

  ‘You want to listen in?’ Bob nodded at the glass, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye.

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Sergeant.’ McIntyre swept past him and out of the door before turning back to see if she was being followed. ‘Tony?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s unethical and not particularly helpful. Ten minutes, alone and unrecorded. Meantime, there’s someone else I very much need to talk to.’

  ‘Eric was arrested in Helensburgh. Not just possession, but intent to supply. I’m not wrong, am I?’

  McLean had found the chief superintendent in his office, going over some admin with a couple of senior uniform officers. Whether it was the way he knocked and opened the door without waiting to be invited in, or just the look on his face, both of them had made mumbled excuses and left in a hurry.

  ‘What are you going on about?’ Forrester’s face flushed red, the first time McLean had seen anything resembling anger in the man.

  ‘You need to be straight with me, sir.’ McLean stood in the middle of the large room, not quite to attention but certainly formal. ‘I know about the incident in Glasgow, the cover-up, the other reason you upped sticks from Helensburgh and came over here.’

  ‘It’s not like …’ Forrester’s protest died on his lips.

  ‘To be honest, sir, it’s not the worst abuse of power I’ve ever seen. And I get it. I really do. You were protecting your son, your family. I’d probably do the same if it was me.’

  Something deflated in the chief superintendent, like a children’s bouncy castle after the air pump’s been switched off. He slumped into one of the chairs at the conference table.

  ‘Sit down, McLean. I can’t bear it when people stand to attention like that. We’re not the fucking army.’

  McLean paused a moment before relenting. He pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, grateful to take the weight off his aching hip.

  ‘I’m sorry if I overstepped the line, sir, but you asked me to find your son and it’s not easy when I don’t know what obstacles have been put in the way already.’

  Forrester said nothing for a moment, just staring at him. Then something like understanding spread across his face. ‘The DNA.’

  ‘Exactly. Tell me you didn’t get someone to swap the samples when your son was brought in for questioning?’

  ‘I wish I could.’ Forrester shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘Christ, I never thought …’

  ‘Reginald Samuel Saunders, AKA Pothead Sammy. Remember him?’

  The chief superintendent said nothing, but the look on his face was answer enough.

  ‘So someone did you a favour. Sent Eric’s swab under the name of another person. Someone else in the cells at the same time, I’d guess. Maybe a local small-time drug dealer called Pothead Sammy?’

  Forrester had his elbows on the table now, buried his head in his hands. When he looked up again, there was a desperation in his eyes that almost scared McLean.

  ‘It’s worse than that. Saunders was in on it. He knew all about Eric. Got him into drugs in the first place. Only way we could keep him quiet was to let him go, lose his record like we lost Eric’s.’

  ‘Only Sammy was already known, wasn’t he? Couldn’t delete his record completely, that would be too risky. So they swapped his DNA sample with someone else. Is that how it went?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. It was just taken care of, that’s all I needed to know. Eric’s record disappeared. He and Saunders walked free.’

  McLean considered his words before he spoke. The logic wasn’t perfect, but it was compelling, and there was no easy way to break the news.

  ‘We’ve got Saunders down in one of the interview rooms right now, sir. He’s not dead.’

  Forrester was all too quick on the uptake. ‘But the DNA sample … From the last crash victim …’

  ‘The database says it’s Saunders, sir. Clearly it isn’t. We know the record’s been switched with someone’s DNA. The question is whose.’

  ‘You don’t think …?’

  ‘No, it’s not Eric. We know that from the swab sample you gave me.’

  ‘They told me you had a way of getting to the truth, McLean. That you could make people trust you and tell you their most guarded secrets. I didn’t believe them, but by God they were right.’ Forrester buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What if Eric’s not actually my son? Christ, I don’t want to even think it possible that Deirdre would cheat on me, but …’

  But twenty-four years ago he would have been a young policeman on the fast track to great things, away from home for days on end. McLean knew nothing about Forrester’s wife, but if the chief superintendent had brought up the possibility, he must have thought it before.

  ‘I think that’s very unlikely, sir. From the pictures you gave me, he has your looks, your build. He’s your son. It’s someone else down in the mortuary, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have a problem.’

  Forrester looked up at him, eyes glistening. ‘We do?’

  ‘Think about it, sir. That dead man had his DNA on the database or whoever covered this up for you wouldn’t have had anything to swap with. Sooner or later we’re going to identify him, and then this whole sorry mess is going to come to light.’

  ‘Oh fuck.’

  Oh fuck indeed. McLean pushed his seat back, got to his feet. ‘I’m going to question Saunders now. He had a sack load of drugs in his flat, and from what I’ve gathered so far your son was probably one of his customers. If we’re lucky he might know where Eric is hiding out. In the meantime, I suggest you get back in touch with whoever it was did you that favour. You might
need to ask them for another.’

  ‘You were found in possession of several grams of heroin, Sammy. Along with almost a half-kilo of cannabis resin. Not even I can imagine that’s just for your own personal use.’

  McLean sat on one side of the table in interview room three, Grumpy Bob beside him. Across from them, Pothead Sammy shuffled in his seat like a little boy needing to be excused but too embarrassed to ask. The duty solicitor, who had introduced himself as Alexander Simmonds, looked almost as nervous as his client. McLean hoped it wasn’t an act.

  ‘So, we’ve got you on possession with intent to supply class A drugs. That’s a custodial sentence on its own right there. But it says here on your file that you’re still on licence. You’re not even going to make bail at this rate.’

  ‘My client has been very co-operative so far, Detective Inspector. I’d be glad if you could refrain from trying to intimidate him into incriminating himself further.’ Mr Simmonds appeared to have found his voice, although it was perhaps higher than the one he used with his mates down the pub, and it cracked around the edges like fraying paper.

  ‘I’m not trying to intimidate Mr Saunders, just laying out the facts. I think you and I can both agree that it doesn’t look good for him now, does it?’

  Simmonds said nothing to that, but he sat a little more upright in his seat all the same.

  ‘What is it youse want?’ Saunders asked. He had been leaning forward, head down and hidden by his greasy locks, but now he looked up, peering through hair like a dirty waterfall.

  ‘Want?’ McLean pretended to consider the question.

  ‘Aye. What youse want? Tha’s how it works, int it? I gie youse some’t an’ youse cut me a deal.’

  McLean drummed his fingers lightly on the table beside the pad and pen he had brought in as a prop. The interview was being recorded, so he had no need to write anything down.

  ‘We don’t do deals, Mr Saunders. We can’t do deals. It’s not allowed. But a record of your co-operation goes against your file. That gets considered when it’s time for parole again. It gets taken into consideration for a lot of things while you’re inside, too. Access to rehab programmes, that sort of thing. Even which prison you get sent to in the first place.’ He paused a moment, letting what he had just said sink in. Then, just before the duty solicitor could open his mouth to object, he continued: ‘So what I want from you is quite simple. I want your co-operation. Tell me, Sammy. When was the last time you saw Eric Forrester?’

  The confusion that spread across Saunders’s face was exactly what McLean wanted. It was a bonus to see it mirrored on that of Alexander Simmonds.

  ‘Whut? Who’s that?’ Saunders asked.

  ‘A client of yours, I believe. Plays bass in a punk band that goes by the delightful name of Fuck Youse. Heard of them?’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ Saunders looked relieved to actually know the answer to something. ‘I ken them. Play like pish, mind, but thon singer lassy’s braw.’

  ‘And the bass player? Eric? You sold him some heroin a couple of weeks back.’

  ‘You don’t have to answer that, Mr Saunders.’ Simmonds cut in, much to McLean’s annoyance. He was right though. Luckily, Saunders wasn’t much for taking advice.

  ‘Oh, you mean Raz? Never heard a’body call him Eric. Raz ’n’ me, we go way back. We was at school together. Din’t sell him nuthin’. He gets it fer free.’

  ‘That’s very … generous of you.’

  ‘Aye, well. Friends dae that fer each other, don’t they? Raz helped me oot back in Helensburgh, an he’s no’ a junkie. Maybe takes a toke now an’ then, but only when he’s stressed, like. Just likes to get away from it all sometimes.’

  ‘So when did you last see him?’ McLean picked up his pen, clicked the end as if he were about to write down what Saunders said next.

  ‘I dunno, man. Few days back. Mebbe a week? All blurs into one, you know.’

  Looking at him, McLean could well believe Pothead Sammy would have difficulty distinguishing one day from the next, although he wondered how much of it was an act. He tried to think of something memorable that had happened recently to jog his memory. It wasn’t hard.

  ‘Do you remember the crash. The truck on the Lothian Road?’

  Confusion ran across Saunders’s face again as he tried to make a connection between this new question and his earlier train of thought. ‘The chemical spill? Aye. Saw all the lights an’ the fire engines and stuff. Man, that stank.’

  ‘Was that before or after you last saw Eric … Raz?’

  Saunders stared into the distance, his eyes glazing over at the effort of thinking. ‘Was round about then, aye. That’s why I was doon that part of town. Setting Raz up. Aye, that’s right.’ He nodded, grinning. ‘That’s right, aye.’

  ‘What’s right, Sammy?’ McLean leaned forward, caught a whiff of weed on the man’s clothes. ‘You set him up before the crash or after?’

  ‘I don’t know, man. It was then. The same time. It’s all mixed up in my head. But Raz was there, aye.’ Saunders leaned forward suddenly, catching McLean off guard. They looked straight at each other, and for the briefest of moments something lucid flashed in the addict’s eyes. ‘You were there, weren’t you, man? When all them people died.’

  ‘Detective Inspector, this is most irregular.’ The duty solicitor interrupted at precisely the wrong moment. McLean slumped back into his chair, clicked his pen off again.

  ‘Where would Raz go, once you’d given him … whatever?’

  ‘Mr Saunders, you don’t have to answer that.’

  ‘Mr Simmonds, we’ve already established that your client gave drugs to Eric Forrester, also known as Raz, apparently. He’s not going to implicate himself any more by telling me where his friend might have gone to take those drugs, now, is he?’ McLean tried to keep the exasperation out of his tone, all too aware that others would listen to the tape in due course.

  The duty solicitor sat back as if he’d been slapped, but there was no denying that he was the youngest person in the room, possibly by a decade. McLean hoped he didn’t bear a grudge.

  ‘Now, Mr Saunders. Sammy. I’ll ask you again. Where would Raz go? If he wanted to hide out for a few days?’

  Saunders shrugged his sloped shoulders, looked around the room as if only just seeing it for the first time. ‘I’ve no idea. Gave him the gear, din’t I? Then he just wandered off into the crowd.’

  45

  McLean wandered the corridors of the station, trying hard not to think about the godawful mess unravelling all around him. Sooner or later Sammy Saunders’s previous history was going to come to light, and it didn’t take a genius to work out what would happen to Forrester then. At best he’d be quietly retired, but if the wrong people got hold of the story then there’d be all hell to pay. And McLean wasn’t sure if he was the wrong people or not. Keep quiet and be complicit in a serious miscarriage of justice? Or speak out and for ever hold the enmity of his fellow officers? Not an easy decision to make.

  It didn’t help that they now had a body still unidentified, and one whose DNA had been on record for some reason. That it wasn’t Eric Forrester was scant consolation. McLean knew better than to hope the switched record was just a random pick from the database either. Somewhere out there, someone knew who it was, and chances were they didn’t want anyone else to find out.

  Preoccupied with his thoughts, he almost walked into a uniform constable heading up the corridor towards him. Their impromptu dance as they tried to pass brought a shy, embarrassed smile to her face, which quite broke his dour mood.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said.

  ‘No need. I should learn to look where I’m going.’ He left her standing there and carried on down the corridor.

  Fewer officers milled around the major-incident room when he stepped inside. Afternoon was losing its battle with evening, the day shift looking to clock off soon. There’d been plenty of overtime early on in the investigation, but things were coming to a slow halt now.
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  ‘Thought we’d got them all, sir.’ DC Gregg came over as soon as she spotted him. McLean looked past her to the whiteboard, where Pothead Sammy’s name was still scrawled in his crabbed handwriting, DI Ritchie’s question mark alongside it.

  ‘Sorry about that. Maybe I should have just left him be. Would’ve made our jobs a lot easier.’

  ‘Aye, but no’ really.’ Gregg shook her head slowly. ‘We’ve still plenty to be getting on with tracking down next of kin for the foreign victims. And Harrison’s working on Jennifer Beasley yet.’

  ‘Did she get anything from the notebooks?’ McLean looked around the room, hoping to see the young detective constable, but she wasn’t there.

  ‘Not that she said. Got a call from her flatmate, though, and headed out to the forensics lab about an hour ago. Should be a message on your phone.’

  As if hearing its name used in vain, McLean’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to reveal half a dozen messages, including one from Harrison.

  Gone to Forensics. Important info re. Crash. Call me.

  He was just thumbing the icon on his screen to place the call when the phone lit up to say Harrison was calling him. He tapped accept and lifted the phone to his ear. ‘What have you got for me, Constable?’

  ‘Sir? Oh, sorry. You answered so quickly. I … Um. I’m at the forensics labs with Manda and Emma. They’ve been looking at the satnav that came out of the truck, tracing its journey.’

  ‘We know where it came from and where it was going, don’t we?’

  ‘Aye, sir. We do. But it’s not exactly … Well, it’d be easier to show you. Any chance you could come over?’

  McLean glanced up at the clock above the door, then out of the window. Sure, it was shift end, but it wouldn’t be dark for several hours yet. One of the great delights of Scotland was the long summer evenings; the utter lack of daylight in winter less so. Of course, it could just have been that Emma needed a ride home and the other two thought they might cadge a lift halfway.

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ he said, then remembered the clock. Going-home time. Traffic. ‘Maybe forty-five minutes, aye?’