Bobo finally worked it out. There’d been more than one grass, and he realised what had caused Danny Boy’s bad gut. Macallan looked in the car and wrinkled her nose.
‘Jesus, I think the first thing you boys need is a shower. Like the man said, you’re all under arrest.’
She did the formalities and Bobo and his team looked like they’d been shot full of morphine, straight into the brain. The uniforms trooped them into the vans and Macallan slapped McGovern on the shoulder. ‘Good job, Jimmy; no one hurt. They might not be the Kray twins, but it’s a result and keeps the executive happy.’
McGovern shook his head and laughed. ‘That lot are lower down the criminal league than the Rangers, and that’s as bad as it gets. Total amateurs.’
‘Don’t knock it. It gets the troops a capture and an excuse for a piss-up. God knows they need it after the last few months; they’ve never stopped and the rate the marriages are breaking up we’re going to have the social work on our case.’
They headed back to what had been the Lothian and Borders headquarters until the advent of the Police Service of Scotland, which had swallowed the eight forces of old. Macallan’s major-crime team and the Special Branch had been subsumed into a new organised-crime and counter-terrorism unit, the logic being that in the modern world, organised crime and terrorism were merging in places and had to be tackled with new thinking. The team, however, had not been required to move offices, and the building itself continued to be known as Fettes, owing to its position in the shadow of one of Scotland’s finest buildings – Fettes College. The police offices, however, could not have been more of a contrast to the college – square and brick built, it was a monument to the lack of imagination in publicly funded modern buildings.
Luckily Macallan was only on her first drink when she got the call from Bill Kelly’s daughter. Bill, her friend and mentor in Northern Ireland, had passed away, peaceful and calm, just as he had been in life. She bought a round for the boys involved in the Bobo McCartney case before heading back to her flat to cry for her old friend and her own deep sense of loss. She got it all out then booked her flight for Belfast before deciding to go and see Mick Harkins. He’d been her DS on the major-crime team when she’d arrived from Northern Ireland, had helped her through a tough patch and became her friend when she needed one most, though he’d nearly died after being hit by a car driven by the serial killer Thomas Barclay.
She picked up the phone and dialled, knowing the call would be answered quickly. Where else would Mick be? ‘Can I come round?’
Harkins knew Macallan better than she knew herself. ‘I take it you’re down, but that doesn’t matter – just come and bring a bottle.’
She managed a smile; they did the same script every time. ‘What about your medication?’ She waited for the reply she knew was coming.
‘That is my fucking medication.’
Macallan hadn’t seen Harkins for a few weeks, and though his recovery had been slow it was happening. One thing was for sure – Mick was a stubborn bastard and doing his best.
She pressed the buzzer on his door and the big surprise came when Harkins himself answered, walking on sticks. The initial prognosis had been bad, and he’d thought at one point that it might be a set of wheels for life.
‘Jesus, look at you!’ Macallan forgot about Bill Kelly for a moment and wrapped her arms round Harkins, who was always uncomfortable with this kind of close contact. She knew that and loved to wind him up. ‘I never thought I’d see you on your feet again. It’s brilliant, just brilliant.’
He disentangled himself and grabbed the bottle out of her hand. ‘The only reason I’m happy to see you is in this bottle. Sit your arse down, and I’ll do the honours. Don’t think I’ll ever be chasing the bad men again, but my target is to be able to get to the bookies under my own steam.’
The lines of strain cut in round his mouth and eyes. He should have died under the wheels of Barclay’s car, and there had been many days when he’d wished that had been the outcome – until the day he became bored of feeling sorry for himself. The choice was clear: he either had to top himself or get the fuck on with it. He decided to give it a try and discovered for the first time in years that he liked himself. The old Mick Harkins could live on in the war stories that policemen love to spin; the new man didn’t have to pretend any more, because there was no longer any need to act tough or cynical for effect with those he’d pulled in for questioning – or with his colleagues for that matter. He slept at night, and when he woke he looked forward to the day. In Harkins’ mind it was a minor miracle that his body was shattered but he was content at last.
‘Say “when”. It’s evening, and I think you need a good shot.’ He filled the glass halfway, and she screwed up her face in mock annoyance.
‘Are you trying to kill me?’
He did his own glass and she filled him in on the Glasgow robbers. It was a requirement that she always had to give him a full debrief on the latest operations. He was out of the job but loved to hear what was happening at the front end. He laughed loudly when Macallan described the arrests and the reactions of Bobo McCartney and his team of outlaws.
‘It’s funny, Grace, they never show it on the TV detective shows, but the reality is that for every professional villain we have to sweep up, there’s twenty numpties in-between. It doesn’t half make life entertaining though. Cheers! Sounds like it’s going well with the team. Tell them I said well done.’
Macallan sipped the warm malt and felt the tension ease out of the knot between her shoulder blades. ‘The best of it is that if the lot we captured at the bank had kept quiet, we might have toiled proving a case, but two of them coughed up the whole story, so they’re well and truly done.’ She laughed and felt her mood lightening with the drink.
Harkins looked down into his glass, his mind shifting from the antics of Bobo McCartney and his team of desperados. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your friend Bill – I know from the way you spoke about him that he was a special man.’
Bill Kelly. Where should she start? Images and fragments of conversations crowded into her mind. She began by describing the small things, the things that made him the man he was and why he’d been her friend and mentor. Harkins had heard some of this before, when she’d first confided in him about the fallout from the Jackie Crawford incident, which was what had ultimately brought her to Edinburgh. But story after story fell from her lips as other, half-forgotten memories rushed back. Harkins didn’t interrupt. This was why she’d come to see him – she trusted him to listen while she poured her heart out.
She finished her story and stared down into her empty glass through the blur of tears.
‘Are you going to the funeral?’
She looked up, and he watched the little girl exposed. He was always surprised when he saw this look – vulnerable, unsure and not the image of the cast-iron detective the papers had created for her.
‘Yes, I’m flying over to Belfast the day after tomorrow. I’m going to take a couple of days off, as I’m pretty well knackered. We’ve hardly had a day off in the last few weeks.’
He smiled. That was the job – that’s what it did: gave you the adrenalin rush and the constant question ‘Why do we do this?’ Harkins knew better than anyone what the job was like – a parasite that invades the body, pumps it full of feel-good highs while it eats you from the inside.
He put his glass on the table. ‘Can I tell you something?’
She took a deep breath, anticipating a dose of Mick Harkins truth. ‘No, you can’t.’ She knew it would make no difference – it had never stopped him in the past, even when she outranked him by two rungs on the ladder.
‘You need to get someone into your life again. Someone you can come home to at night and share this stuff with. Or maybe a short meaningless relationship – but someone. Man or woman, just someone to share the moments with.’
She knew he was right and nodded weakly.
‘Can I make another suggestion?’
She nodded again.
‘If you can’t get a man, get a fucking budgie; you can train it to talk and all that shite.’
Macallan choked back a laugh. ‘What are you like? There was me thinking you’d become all touchy-feely!’
He poured another drink for himself and told her to go home. She kissed the top of his head on her way out.
2
Bill Kelly had wanted to be buried in the grounds of the church he’d loved since moving to the area – when he’d first joined the RUC from the Met – and where he had worshipped even in the darkest days of the Troubles when his faith had been tested to the limit. His family had made sure that it was all arranged properly, and he would lie in the grounds of Drumbo Holy Trinity Church, a few miles south of Belfast in the rolling green hills of County Down.
Grace Macallan walked slowly up the short, sloping path towards the church, lost in the stream of men and women making their way to say goodbye to a good man. She passed under the ancient yews lovingly sculptured into arches, admiring the vision of the people who’d cared enough to make the effort. They were long gone and forgotten, but the yews had endured longer than much of the carving on the stone monuments that decorated the grounds.
Some of the mourners were in the uniform of the PSNI, and she recognised many of the faces. There were a few nods towards her, and a couple of old colleagues even said hello. She wondered if time was healing and whether at least some of them were leaving the past behind them. Two of the mourners were in wheelchairs, and she knew both of them as damaged survivors of PIRA gun attacks.
There had been an unseasonal Arctic blast the day before, and now a glowing autumn sun was struggling to keep the afternoon air above freezing, but it cast an almost golden light on the church tower, and the grass that decorated the old churchyard was sparkling for Bill’s funeral. Macallan stopped outside the church and smiled, knowing that he would have been pleased that such a beautiful day had been laid on for him. She closed her eyes and spoke to her friend. ‘You must have done something right to get a day like this, Bill; the rest of the year it’s pissing rain.’
She shook her head slowly, trying to accept that he was gone. It still didn’t seem possible.
She looked again at the churchyard and the dozens of spider webs exposed by strings of water pearls that hung like fairy lights among all those names on stone. So many stories in the ground there – and most of them forgotten, save for the odd grainy photograph in the back of a drawer, their names and lineage a mystery to their puzzled descendants. They’d lived though, just like Bill. She wouldn’t forget him, and she’d carry a piece of the man right through her own journey.
Macallan hadn’t been in a church for a few years, and although she was a contented atheist, she loved the feel of them, with their connection to communities and what had gone before. She barely heard the words of the sermon but scanned the gathering, watching the faces that were there that day. She saw some hard men squeezing their eyes shut as they struggled to hold back their emotions. Bill was loved, and the proof was there for all to see.
It was cold at the graveside, and thankfully the ceremony was kept short for the sake of the older men and women who’d made the effort to come.
‘Daddy.’
One word, spoken very quietly by Bill’s daughter as the coffin was lowered into the ground, but hearing it was enough to make Macallan bow her head and push the back of her hand into her eyes. She hardly noticed the other mourners as they started to drift away.
As they wandered back towards their own lives, she moved closer to the grave to have her own last moment with her friend and mentor. She stared down and promised him again that she’d do her best and be what he’d hoped for her.
‘Grace.’ The voice startled her out of her moment of reflection. She turned to find Jack Fraser standing behind her. ‘How are you?’ He said it gently.
She hadn’t any idea what to say to the man who’d ended their relationship at the moment she’d needed him most. No explanation, no fond farewells when she was forced to leave Northern Ireland after giving evidence against a colleague. She’d loved him – and he’d almost driven her over the edge. As a barrister and her lover, he’d known better than anyone the months of anguish and isolation from her colleagues she’d suffered.
‘What do you want me to say? “Nice to see you” or something like that? I’m here to have a moment with a fine man, so perhaps you could let it be.’
He looked older but still good on the eye. She didn’t even try to hide the anger, although somewhere deep inside there was a flicker of pleasure just from seeing him. She felt it and buried the emotion before he saw the signs. He didn’t deserve that compliment.
‘I know what Bill meant to you, and I’m sorry – he was the best, and I had the utmost respect for the man. Look, I have my car if you want a lift back into the city; I’ll wait outside for you.’
He looked at her expectantly, but Macallan didn’t answer and turned back to the grave as Fraser walked back to his car.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she murmured, ‘am I cursed for a past life?’ She tried to let her thoughts find Bill again – but the sight and sound of Jack Fraser had put an end to that.
‘Goodbye, my friend. I’ll see you in a bar that needs no coin one day,’ she told him as she turned from the grave, promising herself that she would come back again some day.
As she walked towards the parked cars Macallan still had no idea whether to accept a lift or tell Fraser to go back to whatever his life was now. But the moment she saw him sitting in the 4x4 she knew. What was it about women that allowed them to take men’s worst and come back for more? Yet a man could turn his head away from a relationship and walk off as if it had never happened. She’d seen it in her early days in the uniform of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, attending domestics, watching women take abuse over and over again from the same men they forgave every time. There would probably be a rational evolutionary explanation why, but even as a confirmed non-believer she thought it had to be some ancient curse on the female gender. She pulled open the door.
‘I’ll take that lift on one condition. You take me back to the city and buy me a coffee – not a drink, because I only do that with trusted friends – and then tell me what happened when you walked out of my life without an explanation. No prevarication. I’m doing well and not about to let you fuck it up, but I’m human and always wondered why.’
Macallan had booked into the Radisson Hotel on the Ormeau Road. The red-brick building in the grounds of the old Belfast gasworks towered over the area and was a reminder of the confidence in the city after the Troubles. She would fly back to Edinburgh the following morning and had expected a quiet night in her room staring at the TV, but life was never that simple. They’d hardly exchanged a word on the drive back to the hotel, and she had ordered Fraser to wait in the bar while she changed and cleaned up. When she came back downstairs he was looking uncomfortable, holding a newspaper that she guessed he wasn’t reading. She ordered coffee for both of them and didn’t ask if that’s what he wanted. She felt hard, in control and wasn’t about to give him any room to avoid her earlier question.
‘Talk to me then.’ She said it tight-lipped and waited.
‘You look good. I’ve heard how well you’ve been doing – quite the celebrity detective now. How’s Edinburgh?’
She saw he was trying and there was no act. ‘Edinburgh’s good, and yes, I’m doing well but I seem to be working harder than ever. I’m settled though and have a life.’ She knew that was part lie or Harkins wouldn’t have suggested buying a budgie. ‘And how’s it going with you?’
‘Work is fine and, like you, too much of it. A few of the boys who won’t give up the war and the rest are into drugs and organised crime now. Still, keeps me in balance with my maintenance payments.’
She tried not to look surprised that his marriage had finally broken up. Since he’d left her she’d made up her mind that he’d used her downfall as an excuse
to rebuild his relationship with his wife. She waved to the waiter for alcohol and gave up pretending that she was enjoying or needed the coffee. Fraser told her he’d moved to the city centre since his divorce so he would leave his car and join Macallan over a glass of average house white. It spilled out – all of it. He told her about the call from the Commander and the blackmail over his occasional use of cocaine – the demand that he had to give up Macallan, who’d betrayed the force by giving evidence against her own. There had been a struggle with depression and then a walk along the edge with booze. Eventually his marriage had decayed naturally and they’d parted on good terms, although she’d made him pay financially for his sins. But he’d pulled himself together, submerged himself in work and got his life into some sort of balance.
‘It was hard, Grace, and every day I wanted to call or make some explanation or apology. There’s no defence for the way I handled it; I was away in the head, as we say back home. But when I saw you at the funeral I thought I’d try. By the way do you know the Commander had a massive stroke a few months ago?’ He sat back in the chair, looking drawn.
‘I’m not sure what to say. You look knackered. I want to be really angry, hurt you, but you just took the sting out of that one.’ She considered for a moment. ‘I have to say I’m glad you’ve had a bad time though – you deserved that. It’s still a fraction of what I went through. I have no idea what I would have done without Bill to support me. As for the Commander . . . well, the funny thing is I feel sorry that he’s so ill. He did what he did because he thought it was the right thing – he was trying to defend the force, and God knows he fought PIRA harder than any of us.’
She watched sadness dip the edges of Jack’s slate-grey eyes and gave him a warm smile. He looked pained, and for a skilful advocate he was short of a good line. Macallan thought the wear and tear that had occurred since she’d last seen him just made him more attractive. The extra lines were in the right place, and the additional grey hair gave him that air of importance that distinguished a certain kind of man. Women spent their time and fortune trying to hide these signs, but she guessed that when he was in his golden years, women would still be slavering over Jack Fraser.
Evidence of Death Page 2