Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  Drew hadn’t known Handyside personally, but he’d known all about the man’s CV. Drew had pulled a couple of home invasions in Northumberland and had shifted some jewellery through local contacts who spoke about the top man as if he was some sort of dark spirit feeding off the blood of ordinary mortals. Drew knew that Newcastle was a hard man’s city so anyone who’d made it to the top had to be a bit special and an absolutely pitiless bastard when required. Eddie’s proposal to Drew had been almost laughable, and to even consider fucking about such a man had proven the young gangster wasn’t fit for purpose. There was nothing to worry about with his brother: all he was ever going to be was the late Joe Fleming’s hard son. Pat was nothing without his brother and the family name, and he had shit for brains up to the point Drew had atomised that particular organ.

  Drew had thrown the dice and made contact with Handyside via one of his old contacts in Newcastle. He’d known the risks, but for a man who’d considered suicide too often it was worth a gamble to change from what he was into a big-game player and perhaps find a reason to go on living. He could offer Handyside the opportunity to get rid of the twins who’d put him in so much danger and planned to undermine him at the first opportunity. They’d planned to take Swan despite what Handyside had ordered, and he’d hoped all of that would be enough to get a seat at the table with the Newcastle kingpin. Betraying the Flemings meant nothing to him; they’d deserved to go under as far as he was concerned, and if that was all it would take to get him into a position of status in the game then it would be worth the risk. He could offer a clean-up of the Edinburgh mess and get the business under control, which would make sense to Handyside if he was indeed the smart character of legend.

  He’d agreed to a meeting on neutral territory and booked a hotel room where Handyside had turned up with Maxi Turner. They’d listened to him, and though at one point Drew had felt they were measuring him up for a coffin, they’d said almost nothing, only asking for a half-hour break to talk it over. Drew had gone to the bar, where he’d sunk three drinks to stop the tremor in his hands, but when they’d met again Handyside had offered his hand and invited Drew to sit down.

  ‘We ran over the options. One of them was to take you out; Maxi was all for that and offered to do it himself.’ Drew had looked at Turner, who’d smiled and winked like an old friend before Handyside continued, ‘I think there was sense in that, and in some circumstances you would have been dead already.’

  Drew hadn’t moved a muscle; he was a hard ruthless bastard, but the man opposite hadn’t been putting on some show to impress – he’d just been stating what he thought was obvious. ‘The fact is that there’s a mess in Edinburgh, the Flemings were prepared to betray me and you’re a godless criminal who could probably get things back in order for us all. Here’s what I propose. And betray who you like, but never betray me.’

  Drew had realised in that moment that, true to his reputation, Handyside had all the compassion of a bed bug just before it bites you on the arse, and while Drew was a gold-standard bastard, he’d promised himself never to cross the man unless it was to fulfil his occasional reflections on the benefits of suicide.

  Handyside had let Drew live and they’d agreed what they would do to create a firebreak around them as far as the events on the Brighter Dawn were concerned. They’d cleaned up part of the problem already, but Handyside had decided that the Flemings had to go next and Crazy Horse in due course. His sister had failed in her attempt on Swan, and for Handyside that meant Crazy Horse was responsible, being the man who gave the orders.

  Swan was another problem, and Handyside wanted him taken but squeezed dry to see exactly what he knew in case they were vulnerable in ways they hadn’t yet recognised. No one could tell him what exactly Swan was up to or knew, but he was a major player in moving women in Scotland, and the Newcastle man couldn’t help wondering why he wasn’t involved with the Brighter Dawn cargo. It could have been a coincidence, but there was only one way to tie up that particular loose end.

  Eddie had put his trust in a man who he thought would save him from the devil, but the moment that Drew had smiled and said yes to his offer, he’d signed his own death warrant. When Drew pulled the trigger and blew away Pat, he’d brought to an end the family who’d controlled the Edinburgh drugs market for over a decade – and that left a gaping void. Drew thought all he had to do was step in and take over. What he hadn’t realised was that this kind of void would be filled by chaos before stability.

  33

  Gazing blankly out of the car window, all Macallan could think about was hitting the pillow and getting in a few hours’ sleep before her next round with the Flemings. They were on the bypass and just about to take the exit to head into the city when her phone came to life. She screwed up her eyes and tried to focus on the screen, hoping it was Jack, but she didn’t recognise the number. McGovern reminded her again that she probably needed glasses, and she was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that it was inevitable – another of those small markers to remind her that her life was passing while she wallowed in the same cesspit as men like Pete Handyside and Ricky Swan.

  ‘Jesus – glasses and grey hairs making an appearance. Is this the beginning of the end?’ she said to him.

  ‘It was always the beginning of the end. Live with it – I do.’ McGovern grinned and thought about calling his wife to tell her he’d soon be there.

  Macallan sighed before lifting the phone to her ear. She listened and felt her heart start pounding with growing anger as she realised the day was now far from over. She said yes and okay a few times.

  McGovern knew exactly what those lifeless answers from Macallan meant, and he was just as pissed off as she was. All he wanted was to go home and crawl into bed beside his wife.

  Young felt the tension in the car and a tremor of anticipation ran through her as she sensed she was actually going to be around during a situation. For an analyst this was a small taste of the front line. So much of her work was in a closed room with only a computer screen to play with, and the nearest she got to the real deal was intelligence reports. Her circuits hadn’t been burned out by experience like her two companions and she hoped that whatever was happening, it was serious and she could see it for herself.

  ‘Head for the Ravelston area,’ Macallan said when she hung up. ‘There’s some kind of major incident at Ricky Swan’s place. When I say major incident, that includes bodies.’ She tried to avoid grinding her teeth at the thought that sleep had just moved off into the distance and she wished sincerely that she hadn’t been drinking.

  ‘You did say bodies? That’s plural?’ McGovern asked as his headache increased to nuclear proportions.

  ‘If what they’ve said is true, there are three who departed this life in and around The Corral.’

  ‘Christ,’ was all McGovern could be bothered saying before he seemed to sink down into his jacket.

  Fifteen minutes later they saw the blue lights dotting the streets on their approach to the locus. A fresh-faced rookie, who looked no more than fifteen, stopped them and Macallan watched his Adam’s apple bounce when they told him who they were.

  ‘They must be getting them straight from school,’ McGovern said, attempting to lighten the mood, but they were beyond that possibility.

  ‘Just us all getting older. You probably looked like him at some point.’

  A perimeter had been put in place around the locus and the uniforms were directing new arrivals to an area of grass verge where they could park. By mid-morning, it was worth a small wager that there would be angry residents complaining that the plods had messed up their lovely streets and caused a lot of unnecessary noise for the genteel inhabitants, who weren’t used to being visited by the dark side of the old city. They left the car and asked one of the older uniforms who was in charge. He told them with a barely disguised smirk that the senior officer at the scene was Superintendent Elaine Tenant.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ McGovern said in front of the old PC,
who shrugged and said, ‘You know her then, sir.’

  ‘Tell me?’ Macallan asked, knowing already she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  McGovern shook his head wearily. ‘They call her Ice Cold Tenant. Another fucking genius from the Met come north to show us how it’s done. It’s all by the book, no imagination, no humour and there’s a story that she gets a daily Botox injection to stop her smiling.’

  Macallan hoped that it was just the age-old detectives’ rant against anyone who wasn’t on their team, but McGovern was a top man and usually gave people the benefit of the doubt. She turned to the PC again.

  ‘What about CID senior officers?’

  ‘There’s DI Ronnie Slade and DS Martin Bowman with their team. They’re here but the SOCOs are all over it at the moment so you’ll find them at the incident caravan.’

  Macallan nodded and walked over to the CID team, who were in discussion and all making notes on clipboards. She turned to McGovern.

  ‘You know these guys?’

  ‘The best. Worked with both of them and they’re the business.’

  When the suits recognised Macallan and McGovern they stopped their briefing. Slade shook McGovern’s hand and there was obvious warmth between the two men. The DI turned to Macallan.

  ‘Superintendent, are we glad to see you here.’ Slade was a good-looking man in his late thirties, not a pound overweight and with the look of a gym fiend. He had an easy smile and she could see that it wasn’t just his rank – there was no doubt who the leader was in the team round about him.

  ‘What have we got, Ronnie?’

  ‘What we have is a mess. Three dead. One lying in Ricky Swan’s garden. Looks like a shotgun blast did him. No positive ID but one of my team reckons it’s Crazy Horse McMartin.’ He waited for a response.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Two dead in a car not too far from the garden. Driver and passenger and looks like a shotgun, again at close range. You can imagine. The driver is missing most of his head but we’ve had a look at the passenger and even with the damage I’m sure it’s Eddie Fleming. I worked Leith for years and knew them all.’

  ‘All we need.’ She turned to McGovern, whose colour had drained at Slade’s revelations, then told the DI she’d have a word with Superintendent Tenant and get back to him. The detectives had enough to do taking initial statements from neighbours and the old man who, before he’d collapsed in shock, had been the first to see the mess in the car.

  ‘Anything else before I speak to her?’

  ‘Nothing, apart from the comics in uniform are already calling it the Gunfight at Ricky’s Corral. You can bet the contents of your wallet that’s what it’ll be known as from now on.’

  She wanted to say the word fuck a few times but she had to maintain the dignity of her office in front of the team. She compromised by saying it just the once. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Amen to that, Superintendent. The press will love that one as a headline,’ Bowman chipped in with a wide-toothed grin. He was the oldest of the team and had CID stamped into his soul. She knew these were men who could get something done and thanked God for that. She’d need them the way things were going.

  ‘What about Ricky Swan?’ she asked, and despite what she thought of the man, she hoped he’d survived because they were running out of live suspects.

  ‘No sign of him so far unless he’s lying in a bush,’ Bowman chipped in again. It was obvious that he did most of the cynical funnies; those tended to be the gift of the elder detectives who’d never quite achieved senior rank.

  Macallan headed off to find Tenant. What had already been a shit day was going downhill fast.

  She found Tenant ripping a strip off a young cop who’d removed his hat while helping move equipment onto the site. She waited till the humiliation was over then watched the uniform walk away with his shoulders slumped. Superintendent Tenant was obviously a master in the art of motivating her troops.

  Tenant turned to Macallan, who realised that the Botox reference wasn’t much of an exaggeration: this woman didn’t do smiley faces.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  Her demeanour was cool verging on freezing, but held back just enough in case Macallan was someone important or a rank above her. Her face was unusually pale, with pinched features, and looked worn though she was probably no more than mid-thirties. Macallan explained who she was and saw Tenant’s eyebrows twitch just a fraction as she told her that the events here would probably end up as one of the investigations she was coordinating.

  ‘The decision will have to be made in the morning, and to be honest I have enough on my plate, but I’m sure I’ll land this one as well. It’ll stay firmly with a dedicated team, but there are a number of related problems I’m trying to keep on track.’ She waited for an answer but Tenant continued to eyeball her as if she had a personal hygiene problem. Macallan tried to prompt a bit more of a response. ‘We’ve been in Newcastle since early yesterday and were on the way back when we got the call that this was on. I don’t want to get in the road at the moment so I thought I’d touch base with you first.’

  Tenant turned to face Macallan full-on. ‘I have a lot to do, Superintendent, and unless you have a role here I suggest you keep well back from the locus.’

  ‘Sorry, I thought I’d explained that there are a number of related cases and it’s likely this one will fall into the same category. I’ll head off and get a couple of hours sleep and pick it up first thing, but do you mind if I have a look around before we head off?’ Macallan was struggling to keep the tension out of her voice and wished she hadn’t taken the call.

  ‘You say you’ve been in Newcastle all day.’ Tenant said it already loaded with a punchline. ‘Does that include drinking time? I can smell it from here. If that’s the case you are going nowhere near the locus, suited up or not. Is that understood?’

  Tenant almost smiled. The only thing that mattered in her life was her march to the top, plus her absolute dislike of just about anyone who didn’t matter, and particularly her competitors. She knew all about Macallan, and just reading about the media’s favourite detective made her angry. Turning up stinking of garlic and lager was a gift that was just far too good to ignore, and there was no way she would miss the chance to stick it to a senior detective with so much going for her.

  Macallan cringed and cursed herself because there was no credible defence if the woman opposite wanted to make an issue of it. In practical terms they’d done nothing wrong, but in the modern police world it was simple enough to turn practical into neglect of duty. The best she could do was a tactical withdrawal, but everything about the case seemed corrupted and sometimes she wondered if there was indeed such a thing as karma. She had a trail of dead suspects and now she had this unhappy piece of humanity on her case. The worst thing she could do was overreact and make a bad situation worse. Hopefully she could explain it to O’Connor and if he really had changed then perhaps he could hose the whole thing down. It made her want to weep that she was trying to corner one of the most dangerous criminals in the country at the same time someone was trying to attach a question mark to her sense of duty.

  ‘We had a long hard day, were off duty and needed to eat so we had a beer with the meal. I can assure you that the driver had nothing to drink so please don’t go in that particular direction. We’ll get out of your way, and as I said I may well pick this up in the morning once I’ve spoken to Mr O’Connor.’

  ‘Very well, but you of all people should know that if you want to examine the locus then that means you’re back on duty.’ Tenant turned her back on Macallan, who felt her face glow red as she headed back to find McGovern and Young. She spoke briefly to Slade and tried to act as if nothing had happened, but the tension in her expression confirmed that Tenant had acted true to form.

  ‘We’ll head off, Ronnie, and get our heads down for a couple of hours,’ Macallan said. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. You’ll probably get a break so I’ll see you when you’re
back on. It looks like you’ll be working with us. I know you don’t know what’s going on, but Jimmy will brief you later.’ The DI nodded. He knew what Tenant did to people’s nerve ends, but he didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire between two senior ranks while he was still working at the locus.

  When they got in the car McGovern looked round at Macallan in the back seat. ‘What happened back there? We should have had the sterile suits on by now.’

  ‘That fucking woman just laid into me because we smell of drink. Can you believe it?’ She shook her head, but more in annoyance at herself because Tenant was clearly one of life’s awkward bastards, and if she took it any further she’d be on solid ground. So much of rank politics worked this way that Macallan would bet her salary that this trivial matter would end up dropped in all the right places.

  ‘Just what we need in the middle of all this, a zealot on our case.’ McGovern felt genuinely depressed at the thought; worse still his headache had turned into a general feeling of nausea and he was sure he was going to regret going anywhere near the Newcastle curry. He knew Macallan was right and that if push came to shove they were in the wrong. ‘What the fuck’s happened to my beloved police force? I saw it coming when they closed the bar at Fettes all those years ago.’

  Macallan put her hand on Young’s shoulder as she started the car and headed back to Leith. ‘If anyone asks you, no self-sacrificing loyalty. Tell them the truth and keep yourself away from any allegations.’