Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘I wish I knew, and if I did I’d make sure you had access to them. Is there any way I can help you?’ He looked every inch the concerned citizen and it started to chew on Macallan’s nerve ends.

  ‘When did you last see them? That could be important for us. As far as we know they disappeared the evening after they were detained in Eyemouth. No one appears to have confirmed a sighting of them since then.’ Macallan was certain that they had died the same night that Gunderson had taken a header into the Tyne. Young had confirmed that their registered phones had stopped functioning about the same time.

  She waited for a response and began to wish that they’d left this meeting for another day. Handyside was playing it like a trained actor and they weren’t going to achieve what they’d come for. She couldn’t read him, and they certainly couldn’t put fear in him. It was written all over McGovern; he was a picture of discomfort and clearly just wanted to get out of there.

  ‘The last time I saw them was the day after the incident on the boat. As I mentioned, they do some part-time work for me, mainly a bit of driving and delivery. I heard what had happened and was furious with them. I have a number of businesses in Tyneside and can do without this kind of thing. You must know that the press have given me a hard enough time in the past with allegations that have never been proved. The bottom line is that I told them they were finished working for me. Frankie Dillon was the one that really got to me – an ex-policeman who no one wanted when he came out of prison and I gave him a chance – but there you go, Superintendent, we all live and learn.’

  He sat back in his chair; he’d delivered his lines perfectly. Macallan looked towards McGovern, reminding herself that they’d promised this meeting would be short and they had to be careful to avoid treating him as a suspect. If they did, a lawyer would rip into them at any trial. That had been her intention, but she was disturbed by the whole act in these tasteful surroundings all paid for in other people’s misery.

  There was also the small humiliation of having McGovern in front of her as Handyside handed out his lesson to both of them. They were being played; Macallan had a nagging feeling that he was too well prepared and had known all about them before they arrived. Her thoughts strayed to what Richter had described and the likelihood that the man opposite was responsible in some way. At the very least he’d probably given the order to kill the young women on the boat. If Dixie Deans had been exposed then he was already dead and Handyside must have at least some knowledge of what had happened to the missing officer. And if that was the case then the UC’s body was lying unmarked and a long way from home. His distraught mother might spend the rest of her life wondering what had happened to her youngest son. It was too much for Macallan to continue the play-acting and her patience drained away as if a tap had been turned on all the way.

  ‘When we find them the likelihood is that they’ll be charged with multiple homicides. They’re only part of it. Eric Gunderson died near enough the same time they went missing. Do you think that’s coincidence?’

  For a moment something dark touched Handyside’s expression and his smile faded before he straightened his back and nodded. He looked at McGovern, who stared back, conveying nothing but barely concealed contempt.

  ‘I’m not the detective, but I wonder what you’re implying, Superintendent. Am I a suspect?’ He’d regained his composure, but just for a moment he’d exposed the man she was looking for. It was almost nothing, but it proved he was human, and although he might be careful, somewhere along the line there would be something she could exploit. Taking Pete Handyside head-on was going to be a waste of time; it was the men around him who would give up the answers that would lead right back to his door. There was no reason to be confident, but Macallan felt in her gut that he would fall; what he’d done required an answer, and she wanted to deliver it in person.

  ‘You don’t look that worried, Mr Handyside, but maybe you should be.’

  McGovern shifted in his chair, knowing Macallan was going too far. She’d lost her script and had shown her hand far too early. It was time to back off; Handyside had scored his second small victory by making her deviate from her plan.

  Macallan saw McGovern’s disapproving look, knew exactly what it meant and cursed herself for giving in to her base instincts. Handyside had taken control of the situation from the moment they’d walked into his home and she hadn’t known it till they’d been outmanoeuvred.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure that you know that we want them for murder and that I could count on your help if needs be. I’m sure we’ll meet again, Mr Handyside. Hopefully sooner rather than later.’ She managed to slip back into character, although the damage had been done. If he was recording then it would be thrown at her in court that there had been a suggestion that he was a suspect without any form of caution. What seemed such a trivial matter on the surface could be a powerful technical point for a defence advocate.

  ‘I expect we will; perhaps when you have some answers to this puzzle. I hope you don’t mind, but before you came into my home I thought I’d Google your name. Quite impressive. I said to one of my guys that I think whoever you’re after should be worried.’

  He gave her full eye contact and Macallan decided that he was one of the most convincing liars she’d ever come across. Somehow or other he was able to control his non-verbals in a way that made him almost impossible to read, which meant he was special – no doubt about it – and she wouldn’t forget it, no matter what happened during the rest of the investigation. She saw a man who probably knew most of their moves already. That he had someone at the heart of criminal intelligence just made it worse.

  The friendly smile was back in place now he was satisfied that he’d shown his visitors he was no ordinary villain and they would need to think carefully if they hoped to take him out of the game. There was enough in what had been said for him to know that he was safe for the time being, and if there had been any problems she would have dropped it on him by now. The senior detective had lost her cool for a moment and that usually meant they were a long way short on evidence. In one way though it didn’t make any difference because he saw something in Macallan that concerned him, and he had the feeling that they were tied into a conflict with each other where one of them was going to lose badly. She’d displayed some special qualities in Northern Ireland, and he knew that only a fool would think there was a possibility of buying her off.

  When they got back in the car Macallan turned to McGovern and put her hand on his forearm. ‘Sorry about that. I know he’s our man and I went too far so he won that little round, but no real damage done. The problem is that he’s not going to come easy and somehow we have to find where he’s made his mistake. They all do. If not him then one of his team. Trust me.’

  ‘Okay – you’re the boss, thank God. That bastard gives me the creeps.’ McGovern shook his head; the admission was rare and he couldn’t remember another man having that effect on him before. Handyside should never have been a match physically, but he was and had proven that with a simple handshake. Then there was the way he’d stared into the detective’s eyes . . . there was something deep and poisonous there. McGovern couldn’t touch it or see what it was, but Pete Handyside frightened him.

  ‘Never thought I’d hear Jimmy McGovern admit that one.’ She saw the troubled confusion in his eyes and knew that a man who’d never backed off in his life had just faced his moment of truth.

  ‘Neither did I.’ He tried to remember again, as he turned the ignition key, how long he had to go to retirement. It was nonsense, because McGovern loved the job, but the retirement date always provided a moment of comfort when things went wrong.

  ‘Well we’ll go back and see Harrison and pretend that we actually achieved something today, pick up Felicity and have a meal down here before we head up the road. First thing in the morning we pick up the Flemings, but this time as suspects and give them the full bhoona. How does that sound?’

  Macallan was doing her best to li
ghten the mood, but the meeting with Handyside had been sobering and they were both going to spend too many of what should have been their sleeping hours thinking about him.

  Handyside stood at the bay window with the phone to his ear and watched the car carrying the two detectives drive off. ‘I want to know every move she makes against me.’

  ‘Of course; she’s easily handled, and the day we can’t take care of a few Jock cops then there’s something wrong.’ The voice on the other end of the line tried to sound confident, but they were trying to fool the wrong man. Handyside rarely swore, but he didn’t need to put up any act with the man on the other end of the line whose house in Italy and very comfortable lifestyle he had been financing for years. It was payback time.

  ‘Listen to me, you fucking idiot. I own you, your house, your wife, your family and your police career. Do your job or you go to jail or in the ground. Either way, you’re fucked if I decide you’re fucked. You obviously haven’t even taken the time to research this one. Have you seen her record? Unlike you, my friend, it’s real. Get to it.’

  He cut the call without waiting for an answer, picked up his bag and headed for the gym to be with his wife.

  Later on that evening they sat in a decent Indian restaurant and managed to neck a few beers, which brought some relief from the job and thoughts of the hard days to come. Macallan was beginning to look forward to getting the Flemings hauled in for interview. There was always the possibility of a break. Sometimes it happened that way; just when you thought there was no way ahead, a wee lucky fell into your lap. They couldn’t know as they ate and drank that events in Edinburgh were spinning out of control and the first winds in a perfect storm of events were whipping through the streets of the capital.

  28

  As Macallan finished off her meal she felt as if the damp mood left from their meeting with Handyside had been washed away with the beer. It was, however, mostly down to Young, who was ever the optimist and buzzing with ideas after talking with her equivalent number from Northumbria Police. McGovern prayed that she wouldn’t start talking hypotheses, because her brain worked on a different level to the detectives who sweated at the front end of the line.

  Macallan suddenly felt waves of tiredness flood her and wished they didn’t have the drive back up to Edinburgh in front of them. Any other time they would have stayed the night, but there was too much to be done. They had to get the Flemings in, even if all they achieved was giving them a hard time and searching their homes before kicking them back onto the street. If nothing else it would be a starting point for the surveillance op on the twins, which was almost ready to go. To add to the hassle, the journey back up to Edinburgh wouldn’t be quick. The analyst had offered to stay off the booze and drive, but she was possibly the slowest and worst driver in the world. Harkins refused to ever let her have the wheel, even though they were in a relationship and a result of his injuries was that he still found driving difficult.

  Young had started to work on the phone analysis and it was revealing an interesting pattern of contacts. Despite Eddie Fleming having been warned by Handyside about the need for clean phones before the job, he hadn’t been quite careful enough. He’d got hold of a fresh one but made a call to Swan, who was a lynchpin for the trafficking of women into and through Scotland. Swan knew the police loved up-to-date info on gangsters’ numbers and his handlers had been complaining about his lack of effort recently. Fleming’s number was a nice little titbit that would keep them off his back for a while. It would never have occurred to him that further down the line that small piece of intelligence would be seized on by an analyst and contribute to a chain of events that would tear down a number of lives, including his own. Like so many things in Swan’s life, he’d managed another massive fuck-up by playing a game he’d never really understood.

  Young had picked up Fleming’s new number on an intelligence report and spotted that it wasn’t registered to him. That had interested her, and she’d used it as a starting point for one of her many lines of analysis. She’d noticed that he continued to make his normal stream of calls from his registered phone and only the occasional one from the number that had come from Swan’s handlers. When she’d seen the pattern of calls before and after the Eyemouth incident it had brought a smile to her face. She’d dug into the numbers Fleming had called and noticed one that had no trace on a subscriber. The resulting tremor in her gut was the excitement of realising that she’d hit on something and just needed to methodically follow the trail of calls. One of the phones he’d contacted had been in the Newcastle area at the time they were all interested in so she’d followed the trail from that phone and identified calls to unregistered numbers that had been in the Eyemouth area on the night the Brighter Dawn had sailed into the harbour.

  She knew she was onto something but wasn’t quite ready to tell Macallan yet. It was vital to be sure and not give the detectives false trails and equally false hope. None of it would put Pete Handyside in the dock, but Macallan was right, there was always an opening somewhere and you just had to find it, rip the bastard open and dig about in the entrails.

  Handyside’s team were professional and took precautions like exchanging their mobiles with each other on a regular basis because they knew that would completely distort the picture the police thought they were looking at. They knew the major crime teams would be looking at their call traffic as a matter of routine intelligence gathering. That was why, when Handyside had critical business going on, he made it a three-line whip that all his team had clean phones that couldn’t be traced back to them. As soon as the job was finished he would send out an order that all the phones should be binned. Like DNA, communications had become one of the cornerstones of modern investigation, but the problem for the police was that any criminal with more than two brain cells knew it.

  The saving grace was that even though every criminal in the world was convinced the law was listening to them, they still made mistakes on the phone. It was the old ‘failure to shut your gob’ syndrome that affected the best of them from time to time. Eddie Fleming was smart, tough and extremely talented, but in his business that wasn’t enough. He lacked the iron discipline and focus that men like Handyside relied on to keep them alive and at the top of their game.

  Macallan nodded for the bill and went outside the restaurant to call Jack, who’d be back in Edinburgh in just a couple of days. He answered after the second ring, the sound of his voice making her squeeze her eyes tight for a moment and she felt stuck, wanting to say too many things at the same time.

  He did it for her. ‘Hello there. Hope you’re not in the pub with that Mick Harkins.’

  She smiled and relaxed. It was as if she still couldn’t believe that she was part of the same family as Jack and Adam. Despite the headlines and her reputation as a relentless detective, Macallan lacked confidence in her ability to be wanted by another human being. She often wondered why and guessed it must have grown out of being an only child, plus the sterile relationship she’d had with her father. ‘I miss you,’ she told him. ‘It seems like weeks rather than a few days.’ She should have said something more but just left it there and let the line go quiet.

  Jack knew how it worked and that for Macallan loneliness was like a physical disease that she would always struggle with. She lived a life surrounded by people who loved and admired her but she could never quite accept it as fact. She needed to be told over and over again; he was fine with that, and it was no more than she deserved for what she gave away in wrecked emotions. He knew, however, that humour worked for her and some piss-taking was required, which was why Harkins never failed to bring her back to life – although the price was usually a hangover. ‘I miss you even more than you miss me, honeybunny.’

  She snorted down the phone and he laughed with her. ‘I’m a lot of things, but definitely no honeybunny. How’s our son and heir?’

  ‘Great, I swear to God I can see that boy grow every day, and no wonder with the amount of food he packs
away.’

  Macallan squeezed her eyes again and wished she didn’t have to miss a minute of his life. Every day was precious, and she couldn’t bring any of it back. She thought about Ingrid Richter’s parents and how they’d probably felt the same emotions when she was a child. Now that girl who they’d nurtured and loved was like a lost soul wandering among the living.

  ‘Kiss him for me, and I’ll see you both in a couple of days. By the way, how’s the book?’

  ‘Great. And not only am I going back to being a stupendous barrister, but I’m going to be a famous author to boot! You must be so proud of me.’ He was on a roll with the wind-ups so she thought it must be time to go.

  ‘Pull your head in, Fraser. Take care and I’ll see you soon.’ She stuffed the phone into her bag and went back to the restaurant, where she found Young explaining advanced analytical techniques to a bewildered McGovern, who looked to Macallan for salvation.

  ‘Okay, guys. One more drink and then we’re off up the road.’

  Jack hadn’t asked her how the case was going; he didn’t need to, as it was all there in her voice. He knew her problem was overthinking the investigations. Although it often produced brilliant results, the process sucked the life out of her, leaving her drained and empty at the end of each major case she had to deal with. He would let this one run its course but promised himself that he’d try to talk her into leaving the job before it either killed her or robbed her of the ability to ever be happy again.

  The signs were already there: her suspicion that all the world was bad or a threat, that every shadow hid something terrible. He’d prosecuted some of the worst cases imaginable in Northern Ireland but still managed to leave his demons in the files piled up in his chambers. He’d watched her in the months they’d spent together after Adam was born; they’d both been so happy on the Antrim cliffs, away from the world they normally inhabited, and he was sure part of it was the distance afforded by the Irish Sea – a protective barrier keeping her safe from those horrors she witnessed in the job. He only hoped she would listen to him.