Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  Swan noticed for the first time that part of Cue Ball’s ear was gone and realised at the same time that the wet thing lying on the dashboard was the rest of it. ‘Stop the fuckin’ car,’ he said.

  Swan heaved his guts up onto the pavement at the top of Leith Walk but no one took much notice; it was a common-enough sight to see some punter laying down a pavement pizza after a night of excess. He climbed wearily back into the car and tried not to look at the ear again. Cue Ball switched off the engine.

  ‘Why? I need to know what the fuck this thing is. Two of the workers back there told me it’s because you’re – and I quote – a “grassin’ bastard”. Tell me they’re wrong. Please tell me it’s all shite.’

  Swan couldn’t look him in the eye. Cue Ball’s instincts were nearly always on the money, which was why he’d survived such a long time. Swan didn’t have to say anything – he’d just confirmed that he was a police informant, and that Cue Ball had just mangled three of the opposition.

  ‘Fuck!’ Cue Ball thumped the dashboard with the heel of his hand and left a bloody mark there. He put his head down on the wheel for a moment and tried to think. Swan kept quiet as it dawned on him that he was about to lose it all – everything he’d built up over the years – and now he’d be hunted by beasts who’d enjoy killing him slowly.

  Cue Ball lifted his head. ‘Here’s what’s happening. We’re going to your place and you’ll give me the documents to your car. You just sold it to me for fuck all. I know you stash readies there and I need money because I’m off. You owe me all that. If I’d known what you were I would have let them bury you, and you’d have deserved it. Don’t speak till we’re done or I’ll finish what they came to do.’

  Cue Ball pulled out his mobile and called Li. ‘Pack a bag; we’re leaving. Don’t argue – I’ll explain later.’ Li knew enough not to ask questions and did what she was told.

  Cue Ball took Swan home then picked up the documents for the Merc and a few grand from the wall safe. The remnants of his ear went into a plastic Tupperware box filled with ice. He hardly spoke a word to Swan, who prayed the hard man wouldn’t hurt him.

  Just before he left, Cue Ball stopped at the door and turned to Swan, who was sitting like a child on the sofa with Gnasher beside him, the dog sensing his distress. ‘One more thing. If you report the car stolen or anything about me to your CID friends then I’ll come back for you and finish the job. And that includes your stupid fuckin’ mutt – though at least you’d die together.’ He still had his sense of humour.

  As soon as Cue Ball left, Swan called his handler. ‘Arthur’ tried his best to calm the man down, but his informant was in a blind panic at what might come after him, so the handler and co-handler arrived at Swan’s place within the hour.

  ‘We checked with the locals and apparently it’s like a fucking war zone near the sauna. Three casualties in A&E and the woman is in a bad way. What the hell happened? They’ll want someone locked up for this carnage.’

  Swan had worked out that he was in a vice but the last thing he needed was to add to the pressure. He’d calmed down and knew he had to act carefully if he was to have any chance of survival.

  ‘All I know is that someone attacked me. A punter jumped in when I was on the deck and the two of us did the business on them. No idea who it was, but he was a fuckin’ hero. I knew this would happen, and you did nothing to help, did you? Well you better start taking better care of me, boys.’

  The handler snorted a laugh. ‘You must have had a fucking dream when you were unconscious. You and some caped crusader wiped out the Glasgow professionals – is that the best you can do?’

  Swan realised he’d maybe gone too far, but it was unlikely that Cue Ball was going to walk into a station and give a witness statement because he was a good citizen. There was even less chance of Brenda McMartin cooperating with the bizzies, so he could probably spin it any way he liked. He had to use every tool in the box to keep his head attached to his neck. ‘Tell whoever your boss is that I’ve got enough muck to ruin half the top men in this city, and that includes police. Tell them that, and tell them I’ll use it with the press if I end up with problems over the foreign pros. Know what I mean, Arthur?’

  The handler wanted to strangle Swan, but if his threats were true he needed to get it up the line to someone who gave a fuck. It was obvious this situation was going to cause waves for the foreseeable and he really wanted to be somewhere else.

  16

  In the early hours of Monday morning the hospital began to wake up to a new day. There was nothing too unusual about this Monday; two patients had died during the night and in both cases it had been expected. One of the deceased had passed on with his family at his bedside – they loved him and he’d loved them back. The other man was a chronic alcoholic and not a soul in the world had cared for him apart from the nurses who’d helped the broken man through his final hours. Take away the deaths and nothing too interesting had happened, apart from the woman and two men who’d been brought in to A&E after meeting Cue Ball Ross, his knuckleduster and his lead-weighted baton. The nurses and doctors didn’t get too excited – street battles and the resulting casualties were common enough, though seeing a woman that messed up was one for the memories. She had difficulty speaking through her broken teeth and split lips but kept mumbling that she was going to kill some bastard. One of the young doctors thought that might be difficult for her given the state she was in, but even badly injured she frightened the medical staff who had to care for her.

  In a different ward in the same hospital Ingrid Richter had slept soundly, experiencing a vivid dream in which it was spring, warm, and she was a child again with her mother and father in Prague. The world in her dream was a good place.

  She gradually surfaced, realised she was safe and then slept and dreamed again. It was a different and more threatening world this time: she was standing by the sea, which was pitch black against a white sky. The deep orange sun sitting just above the horizon seemed to bleed a dark reflection onto the water and streamed towards where she stood on a vast empty beach. She turned her head for a moment to look behind her and found nothing but a barren desert.

  She waded into the flat, calm water even though she was frightened. For some reason she couldn’t stop what she was doing; it was as if someone else was controlling her. When she was waist deep the seabed disappeared from under her feet and she was dragged into the depths by something gripping her ankles – it was the women who’d been on the Brighter Dawn, pulling her down to be with them. Their faces were bleached white, the eye sockets empty and dark, and their hair was woven with strands of seaweed that undulated with the movement of the deep waters. She tried to cry out and water flooded into her lungs as she glided up towards the sweet air. She woke gasping for breath. The memories of the events on the Brighter Dawn downloaded and flooded into her conscious mind. A nurse heard her crying and held the girl till she calmed down.

  ‘It was just a dream. You’re okay. You’re safe.’ She gave Richter some water and smiled reassuringly at her, wondering again what could have frightened the young woman to a state that she’d buried her memories so deeply.

  ‘I remember what happened; I remember it all. Please don’t leave me.’

  The nurse stayed and held her hand up to attract the attention of the bored policewoman standing outside. About fifteen minutes later the uniform was on the phone to let the local factory know that Ingrid Richter wanted to talk.

  Macallan headed along the road for her appointment with McGovern, her stomach churning with nervous tension. Although their team was based in the Leith station she’d arranged to meet him in Fettes as the rest of her day would be tied up there reintroducing herself to the job and all the senior people who wanted to see her first. It was a certainty that as the morning wore on she’d be trapped by a range of desk pilots who would demand her attention across the day. It seemed like a good idea to settle herself with a walk from her flat, where she’d dropped off her cases
. The early flight from Belfast had got her in on time and she was missing Jack and Adam already. Doubts had started to gnaw at her again. Their weeks and months together had sealed her relationship with Jack, and their baby’s arrival had given her what she thought of as a real family for the first time in her life. Not having had a happy childhood, the police had filled that role for her in some ways, but she’d eventually realised that her life before had been nothing more than a stage play and when the curtain came down she had always been alone.

  The morning sun had started to dry up the overnight rain and the birds were starting to make the streets buzz before the lines of rush-hour traffic clogged up the far-too-narrow arteries that fed into the city centre. The car park in Fettes was still quiet enough though as she headed for the back door of the old HQ.

  McGovern was standing at the broad office windows drinking his first brew of the day when he saw Macallan cross the car park and enter the building. He felt a huge sense of relief that she was back. They’d need her, but he worried that what she’d been through might have taken her edge away.

  His phone rang and the caller told him that Ingrid Richter had recovered her memory – someone needed to decide what to do with her.

  ‘One of our DOs will be there as soon as. If she says anything at all before that, make a note and tell the detective who attends.’

  As soon as that conversation had ended McGovern called Pam Fitzgerald, who was just finishing off her morning session in the gym. ‘The super’s arriving in the next few minutes and I’ll need to brief her. She’ll be swamped for the rest of the day so get straight to the hospital and make a start with Ingrid Richter. We need what she’s got as soon as. I’ll get over there and join you when I’m done with the boss.’

  He put the phone back in its cradle and worried about an earlier call from the informant handler who needed to see him urgently. He’d agreed but made it clear the meeting would have to be after he was finished with Macallan. The handler had said enough for him to worry but not enough to understand.

  ‘Did you hear about the battle last night? Looks like Brenda McMartin won’t be playing netball again.’ This type of comment would have caused an attack of the vapours for the majority of modern police leaders, but the handler and McGovern were products of a different age and appreciated the odd dig at a career bastard’s misfortune.

  McGovern had some of the details but he already knew the McMartins were in bed with Pete Handyside. It hadn’t taken a wild guess to realise that the dots were all starting to join up. ‘This sounds like you have bad news for me. Correct?’ he’d said.

  ‘Correct. Look, I think the super needs to hear this as well. I know she’s just back in the door, but let’s label what I’m going to tell you as a potential clusterfuck.’

  McGovern knew the handler wasn’t prone to overdramatizing these things so it was probably best to take it as fair warning. ‘Okay,’ he’d agreed. ‘I think there’s a shitload of problems developing on all this so we might as well start dealing with them now.’

  Swan woke after a few hours of restless sleep, his brain thudding against his skull with the effects of the excessive amount of vodka he’d consumed trying to dull the fear that had gripped him since he’d been attacked. Gnasher was beside him on the bed because, like all good dogs, he sensed his master’s pain. He followed his natural inclination and licked Swan’s face, then seemed hurt when the man he loved told him to fuck off.

  Swan tottered to the en suite and threw a couple of aspirin down his neck with a half pint of water. The events of the previous night lit up in his addled brain and he groaned as his heart began to pound, quite certain that his blood pressure must be soaring. It was all bad.

  He sat back on the bed and looked into Gnasher’s sad eyes. ‘I’m fucked. That means you’re fucked as well.’ The dog couldn’t understand the words of course, but it was clear he knew something was wrong.

  Swan leaned over and buried his face in his hands. There was no way a man with such limited bottle could deal with the fiends who wanted to do him harm. There was a fresh bottle of vodka on the bedside cabinet and he necked a good whack in one go before falling back onto the bed into something between sleep and a coma. Gnasher hadn’t been out for far too long and the mutt’s bladder couldn’t stretch any further. Increasingly nervous and stressed, he emptied the contents all over Swan’s black silk bedsheets.

  17

  Crazy Horse McMartin took the call from the hospital and blew a fuse, which was his normal reaction to a crisis anyway, but this was family. It meant nothing but grief for his team, who tried to keep him stable – or what passed as stable for someone with his particular handle. It wasn’t that he was at all touchy-feely with Brenda; it was just that ancient instinct that the family name counted for something. As far as he was concerned it was similar to the NATO charter – an attack on one McMartin was an attack on all and should generate a response.

  He blew his top at those assembled in the room: ‘Find out what the fuck happened through there and what went wrong. I thought the cunt was supposed to be a ringer for Jimmy fuckin’ Krankie?’ His team looked at each other and collectively shrugged. No one wanted to make a response because they’d seen his reaction before and it usually ended up with one of his own team needing stitches. ‘Get the fuck through there. Speak to Brenda and the boys and get me some answers. Or do I have to do the whole fuckin’ action on my own?’

  Twenty minutes later he was raging down the phone to Handyside, promising to put it all right. Handyside let him talk, knowing that there would have to be a divorce from the Scottish teams because they were just too fucking unpredictable and the definition of business meant something different to them. He would have to try to take charge of a situation that might spin out of control, taking them all with it. He let the Glasgow man rant till he started to run out of steam.

  ‘Listen carefully to me, Bobby,’ he said finally. ‘We need to step back and find out what the situation is. Our friends in the constabulary will be taking a great interest in this, and we need to let the smoke clear. I’ve got a bent one here so I’ll see what I can dig up from him. I’m sure you have your own up there so get digging and then we’ll speak again. I’ll talk to the Flemings too and get their take on it. This is their territory so they might know a bit more than we do.’

  ‘Fuckin’ wankers,’ was all McMartin got out before Handyside interrupted him.

  ‘Listen to me. We have more than enough to deal with at the moment, and the Flemings are part of our organisation for the time being.’ The inference was enough to satisfy McMartin that they might be able to take action against the Edinburgh team in time. ‘Just concentrate on what happened last night and then we’ll get to the next problem.’

  McMartin had gone quiet and Handyside was probably the only man on God’s earth who could achieve that with the Glasgow headcase. After a pause, he got his reply: ‘We’re good. Just leave it with me and I’ll be back to you as soon as I can.’

  Handyside put down the phone and sighed as he turned to Maxi Turner. ‘Fancy a drink, Max?’ He was the only man who shortened Turner’s first name that way, and it was a small but important sign of the bond between the two men.

  ‘A bit early for you?’ Turner knew this offer was a sign of stress in a man who was almost always in command of a situation.

  Dark rum, being a popular drink with seamen, had always been Handyside’s poison of choice, and these days it was also a nod to their younger, wilder days on the shores of the Tyne. Handyside measured some out, threw the neat double shot down his throat and rolled his neck, trying to ease the knots of tension that were spreading to the back of his head.

  ‘This situation could get badly out of control. We need to make sure we have all bases covered or these crazies north of the border will pull us down. I wonder if we should have taken out the Flemings when we had the chance? I thought we should find out what this Ricky Swan knew. Any thoughts?’

  Asking Turner’s opinion
was another mark of respect; he was the only man in Handyside’s world who received this tribute. Turner knew he was close to the man, but he also accepted that Handyside was not as other men and that for all the years they’d been risking their necks together he would cut him adrift without a second thought if it made business sense to him – or, more importantly, if it meant defending his family. He would always pick his words carefully, but he knew there was something that needed to be said, surprised as he was by Handyside’s doubts about letting the Flemings live. He couldn’t remember the man ever hesitating when something needed to be done, and for a moment Handyside looked human – and that sent something crawling up Turner’s spine. Their lives depended on the boss’s strength and will to outdo all others.

  ‘Look, we’ve taken care of the rough edges down here and we should survive any aggro from the law. The evidence is safely tucked away at the bottom of the North Sea and under the moors. The girl in Edinburgh doesn’t know anything at all about us, and I’m not sure what this fucker Ricky Swan has that could hurt us. He can probably damage the Flemings, but can he do the same to us? What I’m saying is – do we need to start these combat operations up there? Shouldn’t we sit tight, take a few holidays in the sun and wait for it to settle down again, call off the dogs for the time being? I’m telling you the McMartins are fucking aliens and can’t be trusted to do what they’re told.’

  While Turner was speaking Handyside’s mind drifted to the time they were boys living on the edge of the great river, when the quayside had been their playground and more of an education than school. As kids they’d seen drunken sailors beat each other senseless, sniggered as they watched the local pros service their clients in the alleys round the fish quay and had become cynics long before they were adults. He remembered the games of dare that had taken them to their limits and the night the boys had decided to prove themselves by climbing down the iron ladders that hung precariously on the quays to let the fishermen climb down to their boats. The dare was complete when their feet were just above the river. They’d had to hang on till the other boys counted a hundred. He remembered his arms aching, but he was Pete Handyside and wouldn’t give in for anything. That was until he’d realised what was living in the darkness under the old piers. His friends had counted about halfway through the challenge when he’d noticed dozens of dark shapes scuttling across the boulders and rubbish strewn under the pier. Rats – one of the only things in the world that terrified him. They had been everywhere, and some of them had stopped and stared, their eyes glinting like small specks of hell. His throat had closed up and all his strength had left his arms. He had been lucky that Turner had dived in and saved his unconscious friend from floating down the river. He’d never told anyone what he’d seen or why he’d passed out and it was left at that. In his darkest moments he remembered those rats staring out at the vulnerable skinny kid hanging onto the ladders. He was there again now, staring into the dark where the rats watched and waited for a fall.