Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  Macallan had got as far as turning the handle on her office door when she remembered the intelligence report that had been dropped on her desk. She went back to pick it up, scanned the sanitised information and sat down.

  ‘Mick.’ She said it quietly and chewed the hard skin on her forefinger. A human source had called in with information that Billy Drew had teamed up with the Flemings and that he was still making noises about doing Harkins. She sighed. Mick would laugh it off, but she understood what Drew was capable of. If he’d made up his mind then the threat was serious. She would see Harkins about Swan but she had to get acquainted with her team again first.

  McGovern called Swan’s home number but he was still unconscious and unaware that his bed was soaked in Gnasher’s urine. He snored like a pig as the dog hid under the bed trembling, the animal’s instincts telling him that something was very wrong.

  The seeds of a perfect storm had been sown and the players all knew it. Only some of them had met, but they realised that they were locked into a conflict that would bring casualties. They all wanted it to be someone else and would do whatever it took to make sure that was the case. In the end, it would come down to survival of the fittest.

  19

  Handyside had been unable to sleep so he’d risen at 5 a.m. and run a few miles before showering, getting into his car and driving down to the fish quays at North Shields. He ignored the sign warning that the fish market and harbour were a restricted area with no access to Mr and Mrs Joe Public and walked past it, nodding to the security men, who knew who he was. The minimum wage was not enough of an incentive to order the celebrity gangster off the premises and he always slipped them a few notes on the way out.

  He sucked in air all mixed up with the smells that hang over a fishing port and market. The stink of diesel always hit the olfactory receptors first then cocktailed it with fresh fish, rotten fish and tar, all chilled by the salt air blowing off the North Sea. The wind had turned to the north and brought the cool arctic air that can freeze the skin of the east-coast natives even on the sunniest day. The place took him back to his early days, and he always went back there to work through his tangled thoughts.

  Handyside was probably incapable of caring deeply about anything, any place or anyone apart from his wife and children, but the old harbour came close. As a boy he’d loved to watch the deep-sea fishermen unload their catches as the air rang with the voices of salesmen rattling off words in a language no one but they understood.

  He stood on the edge of the pier, watching a trawler’s fisherman cast off the ropes that had held the boat safely to land and head down the river towards the open sea. There had been so many times he’d wished he’d chosen a life at sea, and even though he knew it was foolish, he still liked to imagine the simplicity of that existence compared with the one he’d chosen. He couldn’t know it but his yearnings were not that far removed from Grace Macallan’s.

  He lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke into the wind, which wafted it back onto his face. He looked up to the sky, closed his eyes and tried to forget just for a moment who he was and what his existence meant. The breeze whipped up off the deep waters and cooled his face. There was a storm coming, he was sure of it and he needed to be prepared.

  He turned away from the pier and headed home, where he gave his wife some instructions. He’d avoided it before but had planned what to say if the situation arose. She squeezed his hand and her frightened look made him choke.

  ‘It might never happen. Just be sure you know what you’re doing if it does.’

  She nodded and bit her lip till it hurt. She didn’t want her man to see her tears.

  20

  By halfway through the afternoon Macallan would have struggled to recall all the meetings she’d attended during the previous few hours. It was always the same so she knew what to expect: everyone who was senior in rank wanted to prove they were senior in rank, and the scripts were almost identical. She’d been in the game long enough to know it had to be endured to keep them happy and so she smiled at the right times in case she had to call in a favour at some point in the future.

  O’Connor saw her first and she was pleased that at least he’d kept it short and sweet. All he’d asked was to be kept in the loop. ‘This one has sensitive written all over it. It’s a miracle that the press aren’t on top of it already – a missing UC and trafficked women drowned like nineteenth-century slaves. I think we need to put something out to them before they start giving us a kicking. What do you think?’

  ‘I agree,’ Macallan had said, knowing the papers would create havoc for the investigation by sensationalising the story. Why not? It was sensational. ‘We have to give them something, and I guess a few of them will have picked up parts of the story from the usual sources.’

  There’d been a brief pause that hinted at embarrassment for both of them. The usual source was everyday code for leaks from inside the job. When Macallan had been involved in the Barclay murder case she’d leaked information to Jacquie Bell; O’Connor had found out and seen it as a betrayal, though it was his realisation that Macallan was a more talented detective than he could ever be that had made him try to destroy her career.

  At least until he’d received a call from Harkins, not long before the Loyalist Billy Nelson had nearly killed her in the bomb blast near Fettes. Harkins had rarely given rank much respect when he was in the job and post retirement he could say what he liked to whoever he liked. O’Connor owed him from the past (and, truth be told, he’d always respected and to a certain extent envied Harkins) so he’d agreed to go to Harkins’ home, and almost as soon as he’d set foot in the place he’d been ordered to ‘shut the fuck up and listen’. Harkins had proceeded to explain to him, not at all tactfully, that he was a fool and that Macallan had never set out to hurt him; that it was his vanity that had stalled his career and broken a relationship that she had wanted more than anything. He’d reminded O’Connor that he was a talented cop, just not a talented detective, and to think about that.

  ‘Don’t you think she’s had enough for one life?’ he’d said. ‘You’ve just lost the opportunity to be with someone special. I warned her about you, that ego that fills every fuckin’ room you step into.’

  O’Connor had got the message, thought about it and realised he still loved Macallan. But it was too late, and he’d have to carry that loss for the rest of his life.

  ‘John?’

  He’d blinked and apologised, realising that his thoughts had drifted. ‘Leave it with me; I’ll get some form of words out and run it past you first. They’ll be hammering on the door soon enough.’

  He’d smiled as he’d stood up to shake her hand warmly and Macallan had puzzled again at what could have changed the man from bitter enemy back to something like the person she’d first known and then loved when she’d joined the old Lothian and Borders force.

  All her meetings over, she flopped into the chair in her office and toed the shoes from her aching feet, sighing with relief that at least the formalities of starting again were over and the real work could now kick in. She picked up the phone to track down McGovern and he told her he was on his way back from the hospital where he’d been involved in a second session with Ingrid Richter. Fitzgerald was with him and Macallan asked him to bring her in for a meet when he got back.

  She put the phone down, resisting the urge to try to speak to Jack because too many calls would sound like she was struggling and all that would do was make him worry unnecessarily. He could cope with what he had to do, and the break away from criminal work had worked wonders on him both mentally and physically. There was no doubt he was starting to get the urge to return to his practice as a barrister and the break had given him new drive. Macallan had thought that his attempt at writing was an indulgence, but it still made her proud of him. What had come as a surprise was that there was real interest in the book, and it looked like he was going to get a deal that might let them buy the cottage rather than having to rent it. She though
t about all those good days on the Antrim shores when they were concentrating on no one but themselves, just being happy, and smiled.

  The knock at the door as McGovern came in startled her from her daydream. He tried a smile, but it was tense and she guessed it had been hard going with the interview. Listening to what other human beings were capable of could still shock the toughest detectives. The girl who came into the room behind him looked drawn and seemed unsure at what to do in the company of her new boss. Macallan remembered that feeling and tried her best to put the young detective at ease.

  ‘Sit down. I hope Jimmy hasn’t been working you too hard,’ Macallan said, nodding to McGovern to take a pew. She thought it would be easy to like Fitzgerald. It was enough to have McGovern’s recommendation but she noticed another plus: the girl had an open face that had still to be lined by the constant strain of investigating other people’s secrets. She was tall and had hardly a spare ounce from what McGovern had told her was a fanatical appetite for a range of sports – including those of the extreme variety. Her straw-coloured hair was pulled back into a ponytail, she wore no make-up and her clothes were casual enough to show Macallan that fashion and appearances didn’t concern her too much. McGovern had been right; there was a lot in the young woman that reminded Macallan of herself years before – though she certainly hadn’t been as fit at that age.

  ‘Okay, tell me what you have and what you think. No holds barred in this room, Pam, and I guess Jimmy will have already told you that I like to hear it as it is. Never what you think I want to hear.’

  They gave her it all and occasionally pulled out their notes to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. They’d had to make a huge effort to hide their emotions as they’d listened to Richter describe the horrors she’d witnessed in sight of the Berwickshire coast.

  McGovern had heard so many terrible stories in his career that he wondered why anything bothered him any more, but listening to the girl had made him want to kill the men who’d committed such an atrocity. Macallan hardly spoke and didn’t need to – there was enough information for her brain to start forming images of young women being beaten to death and thrown into the sea like so much garbage.

  McGovern watched her clench her fist repeatedly, although her expression rarely changed and she never touched the brew she’d poured for herself. Fitzgerald had left it to McGovern initially but she needed to unload and eventually joined in, filling in the blanks when he missed some fact or just to put her slant on it.

  When they were finished Macallan asked Fitzgerald to get the statement typed up as soon as and watched her leave the room, reassured that McGovern had been on the money with his assessment of the young officer. When they were alone she tried to gather her thoughts, get the priorities in some kind of order, but there were stacks of them jostling for attention and she knew there were more to come. It was difficult trying to focus and block out what had happened on the Brighter Dawn at the same time. It was terrible, but her job was to deal with it and every day that passed would make it that bit harder to get a result.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked McGovern. ‘You look tired.’ It was an obvious question, but she knew that these events sucked the life out of the officers who listened to the victims recount what they’d seen.

  ‘I’m fine. To be honest, I was amazed how calm and collected Ingrid was. Maybe it was the sedatives but she looked dreamy when she was telling the story. God knows how she came through all that and lived. She must be made of the right stuff to do what she did to survive.’ He shook his head wearily and promised to tell his wife and children that he loved them when he was finished for the day, whenever that was.

  Macallan wanted to send him home to get some rest, but it would have been foolish to even suggest it at this stage of a case, and anyway, he’d just find some way of politely refusing. Men like McGovern put their own comfort way down their list of priorities, and he was one of the lucky ones in that his wife actually understood and let it be. She was happy just to have the bits of him that the job hadn’t chewed off over the years. Ruined marriages were accepted as routine collateral damage in investigation work, but McGovern was an exception to that rule and he thanked his lucky stars every day for it.

  ‘First things first,’ Macallan said, trying to get them back on track and work the lines of enquiry. ‘It was good work sealing off the Brighter Dawn as a crime scene so quickly. Make sure all the samples are taken to the lab for profiling.’

  McGovern nodded and started to make notes as he got back into gear.

  ‘Concentrate on samples from the bunks where the girls slept; that’s our best chance. Next thing is that we need to contact the British office in Europol and try to see if they can get us possible missing persons who match the descriptions Ingrid has given us. How long is it taking to profile DNA samples at the moment?’

  McGovern shook his head. ‘This is Police Scotland – even urgent is going to take two to three weeks.’

  She wanted to say fuck it, but it was what it was. ‘Okay, let’s get on with it. We’ve got Ingrid and the first thing is to get her DNA matched to a sample on the boat, but the lifebelt tells us what we know already. Did she describe what bunk she was sleeping in?’

  ‘We’ve got it in the statement.’

  ‘And where’s the boat now?’

  ‘Still in Eyemouth. Two uniforms are guarding it 24/7 till we decide what we’re going to do. All the investigations are being run by separate teams at the moment. Any steer yet on our role?’

  She nodded and gave him the answer he wanted, although it would strip a few more years off his life. ‘As of now we combine them all under my command: Dixie Deans, Ingrid and Ricky Swan. We’ll need to get a few more staff on-board; and if you could get hold of Felicity Young and Lesley Thompson in the morning and make arrangements to second them to the team, that will help tremendously.’

  McGovern grunted an acknowledgement.

  ‘Good. Right, the next thing is to get the Newcastle team to find out where Alan Hunter and Frankie Dillon can be located. Unfortunately we know where Eric Gunderson is. Once we meet the guys down there we can arrange to have them lifted at some stage and, depending on Ingrid, get an ID parade set up. If she does the business we’ve got enough to at least see them locked up. We should be able to confirm her DNA from the boat.’ She stood up and walked over to the window, stared across the city and thought for a moment that it just couldn’t be that simple.

  ‘These two men who were watching it all – you sure about that?’

  ‘No question. They were spotters, has to be and it fits. The cigarette ends are already lodged for examination.’

  ‘So we need to get the DNA results from those fag ends and ID the spotters then we can really stir the bastards up.’ She felt her mobile tremble and clicked on the screen. It was a close-up selfie of Jack and Adam with some kisses. She put it away quickly; she would stare at it later when she was alone. Its arrival had distracted her slightly but gave her a warm feeling that cheered her, and she felt a familiar rush of energy as the wheels started to turn.

  ‘Last thing for now is to get a team started on getting the Flemings lifted. Dixie Deans was working for them, we know they were going to Newcastle for a meet and then he goes off the radar. They have to know something. Okay they’ll probably say nothing, but let’s get in their face.’

  McGovern felt his mood lift at the thought of some action coming up.

  Macallan stood. ‘Now let’s go and get my car. I want to see Ricky Swan and hear what he has to say.’

  21

  Less than an hour later Gnasher barked loudly enough to wake his master, who’d slept through the doorbell ringing for the third time. He’d been woken twenty minutes earlier by a call from his handler that some big fucking cheese was on the way to see him, but he felt like shit and just wanted to lie perfectly still till his hangover had passed. He’d fallen asleep again almost immediately. When he resurfaced it dawned on him that the bed was soaked and he thought
at first that he’d pished himself again. It happened occasionally and he never really bothered, because that’s what he paid his Polish cleaner less than the minimum wage for. The realisation that it was the bedclothes rather than his jim-jams that were wet led to him promising Gnasher that he would kick fuck out of him when he got his head together. The dog still hadn’t learned English but his instincts told him that something was definitely very wrong so he stayed on his belly under the bed. If that wasn’t enough, the dog was hungry; Swan had forgotten that the beast needed fed occasionally.

  When the door opened after the fourth ring Macallan’s first impression was that Swan looked exactly like what he was. His foot-long comb-over was hanging limply over his ear and he looked as bad as he felt. McGovern made the introduction and was in mid-flow when Swan turned and padded back towards his lounge, leaving the door open.

  McGovern smiled. ‘I think that means come in, Superintendent.’

  ‘Have a seat for a minute and I’ll just get a wash,’ Swan said. ‘It’s been a funny old night. Do you want a drink or something?’

  McGovern and Macallan had already picked up an overpowering smell of pish and politely declined. Swan washed himself as best he could, put on some clothes and filled a glass half and half with ice and orange juice. For a small man he had a jumbo-sized capacity for drink and his tolerance meant he recovered quickly. When he sat down he took in the woman and was impressed. A bit older than the twenty-somethings he preferred, but he thought that he’d definitely give her a turn if she was up for it. She saw the look in his eye, knew exactly what it meant and felt decidedly queasy for a couple of moments.