Evidence of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  It didn’t happen. Instead there was a pause, and the men stood quietly round her for a moment. Then her hair was pulled violently again, forcing her neck back till she thought it would snap from her spine, and she pushed up onto her hands and knees. Nelson forced her forward to the edge of the pit and she looked into the blackness until, at his nod, Fisher switched on the powerful hand lamp.

  Lena couldn’t recognise what she was seeing for several seconds because of the sudden illumination and her subconscious refusal to take it in. Then her mind separated the shapes below her. There was little difference between the colour of her husband and son’s faces and that of the reeking earth around them. There were only shades of grey in the harsh mixture of moonlight and the beam from the halogen lamp. It was them though – Joe and Danny. Only their faces were exposed, but what else did she need to see? Joe’s lips were stretched back in what looked like a snarling last look at the world. At the opposite end of their grave Danny’s face stared back at his mother. She tried to make a sound but nothing came.

  Nelson let go of her hair and knelt beside her. She didn’t try to crawl away; she was unable to move, nothing in her motor system was working. Lena was in a kind of agony that in the days and years that followed she would not be able to recall at will – it would come back to her in the night or unannounced, replayed in exactly the same form, over and over and over again.

  Nelson gave her a few moments to be with her family. Unlike the boys with him, Nelson had been educated in warfare by the British Army, so he knew the benefit of tactics, unlike the blunt instruments that made up his team. He always remembered one of his instructors who loved to quote the words of the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu: ‘The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.’ And he had decided that in letting the late Joe Fleming’s wife live, he could subdue other enemies.

  ‘Now, Lena, the good news is that I’m going to let you go. I could dig another hole so you could have a “his and hers” plot but I’m sure you’d rather go back and get a good drink in you. You open that big fat fuckin’ gob and we’ll come back and bring you here forever. You just stay out of our business now. How does that sound?’

  She turned her head and stared at Nelson like a whipped dog. Then it sank in that he was going to let her live and nothing else mattered as long as she didn’t go in the ground beside Joe. She tried to kiss Nelson’s hand, but he recoiled.

  Fisher laughed. Nelson stared at him without speaking and the look stopped Fisher in his tracks.

  Nelson stood up. ‘Say goodbye to your husband and boy, Lena, and hopefully you’ll not be seeing them again.’

  He threw a shovel over to Fisher, told him to cover up the Flemings and then dragged Lena back to the van, where she lay shaking, imagining the grave all the way back to Edinburgh.

  Two hours later the two beat officers who’d found Maggie Smith were back on nights and responding to a call that a drunk woman was staggering around behind the restaurants and shops that fronted Commercial Street in Leith. It was 4 a.m. and Charlie hated these late calls that came in when they should have been sitting quietly, maybe taking forty winks till it was time to go home and get the bacon rolls. He turned to Tony.

  ‘Four in the morning and some twat is pissed. Can you believe it?’

  Tony was happy to get the call, being at the opposite end of the cynic scale and still loving the job. Any time, any day as far as he was concerned; but he also knew that although Charlie had done it all before – and despite him acting the tired old cop – the cynicism was seventy per cent acting.

  They drove slowly behind the old bonded warehouses that now housed the trendy shops and restaurants in sight of the dominant Scottish Government complex. They couldn’t see anything and got out of the car, lighting up their hand lamps to check the edges of the car-park area.

  ‘She probably made it home,’ Charlie said hopefully, lighting up a cigarette to annoy Tony, who hated the smell and was a confirmed gym addict. He leaned against the car as his partner scuffled around the edges of the car park.

  ‘How far do you think I should look? She could be anywhere.’ He flashed his torch around a little more, recoiling as a refuse-fattened rat scuttled towards the back of a top restaurant to see what the fine diners had left for him.

  ‘Just let me finish this in peace, son, and I’ll be right with you.’ Charlie saw his role as a constant process of teaching his young friend about reality. Patience, street skills, seeing it all for the farce that it was – and above all keeping his head straight. Later, when he eventually married, the task would be making it work and realising that one day the job would be over and he’d just be another old cop with a bagful of war stories.

  Tony was about eighty yards from his mentor and getting ready to throw in the towel when he heard it – a low rumbling growl. He felt the muscles in his back and neck almost lock up with tension. He was sure it was a dog. He had a fear of large, aggressive dogs, a legacy of his childhood and an incident with one of those sad bastards who parade their devil dogs round the area because they couldn’t afford a proper penis extension like an expensive car. The dog had been off its lead and ten-year-old Tony had been kicking a ball about on his own, dreaming about the day he’d line up for Manchester United. The dog had cornered him and stood about two paces from his face, dribbling saliva and half-frightening the life out of him. He’d never endured fear like it and all he’d been able to hear was the dog’s owner laughing in the background. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes from the animal’s, realising how vulnerable and weak he was and that the world was a dangerous place.

  He fought against his instincts and shone the torch towards the noise. ‘Charlie, over here!’

  ‘What the fuck is it now?’ Charlie stubbed out his cigarette and knew that it was going to be another late finish. ‘Fuck it.’

  He ambled across and crouched down, taking in the figure trying to squeeze into the space behind a parked car and a low stone wall. It was Lena Fleming, but not the Lena that he’d known since they were both a lot younger. She’d always liked the company of criminals and had the looks that Joe Fleming as a rising star had wanted on his arm, and that had been good enough for her. Charlie had developed quite a thing for her, and when Joe was doing his first stretch for a post-office robbery, it was he who had put a smile on her face on the occasional night shift. Lena had enjoyed the affair – especially with the added spice that Joe would have gone mental if he’d known it was a copper on his side of the bed.

  ‘Jesus, Lena, what’s happened to you?’ Charlie hardly recognised the woman, her knees pulled up tight, recoiling from the two policemen.

  ‘Get that fuckin’ light off her face; she’s terrified!’ he barked at his partner, and he was right. Lena was terrified and would be for the rest of her life.

  The policeman took in the bruising, dirt and vomit, the eyes bulging as if her lids had been stapled back. He knew that she’d been hurt – more than hurt – and that the damage went beyond what he could see.

  She was shivering with cold and shock. Charlie took hold of her gently, talking to her as if she was a child and managed to lift her up, forgetting about his chronic back problem.

  ‘Get a blanket from the car, Tony, and an ambulance. Pronto.’

  Tony ran to the patrol car while the older man lifted Lena up and carried her like a child. His back objected violently and would make him pay for several weeks to come, but he didn’t even notice it at the time.

  The ambulance was there in minutes and the paramedics thought Lena had been in an accident. As it drove away with the blue light swirling, Charlie shook his head and saw the threads of a problem. He didn’t know what they meant but could sense it was bad and there would be a price to pay. Joe Fleming and his son were missing and now this.

  ‘She looks like she’s just seen her own grave, son.’

  Tony nodded in agreement, but he was still remembering the dog’s snarling face.

  16

 
; Macallan shifted nervously from one foot to the other. That didn’t work, so she walked to the counter and scanned the board, trying to make sense of an endless list of coffees topped with enough calories to sink a small ship. She’d never been able to make sense of it and just wanted an ordinary coffee, but she sometimes wondered whether that product existed any more.

  ‘Just a coffee with milk, please.’ She looked pleadingly at the waitress, hoping she wouldn’t offer her a dozen alternatives. The girl, whose name tag said Anna, took pity on her and got Macallan exactly what she’d asked for.

  She wondered why she even bothered with coffee – every time she finished a cup she told herself that she hated the taste and that it corrupted the breath for about two hours. It was the drug of course – caffeine, the most popular legal high.

  ‘Jesus.’ She thought about her breath and decided to leave the coffee alone once she’d bought it. Jack Fraser was about to arrive, and she didn’t want to put him off before they’d even said hello again.

  The airport was choked; some delays in London had knocked on and caused inevitable jams everywhere else. At least his plane was on time, she thought as she scanned the arrivals board for the tenth time. She asked herself again why she was so nervous, but of course she already knew the answer.

  Macallan could pretend that Jack’s visit was just him attending a conference, that it was old friends getting together for a catch-up and drinks, but that was nonsense – and she knew it. It was as clear as the blue skies above the airport that Fraser wanted to rebuild what he’d shattered in Belfast.

  It seemed a lifetime ago, but Macallan would never forget her feelings of despair about what she’d gone through in Northern Ireland, especially those associated with him. Everything else that had happened she could have dealt with if he’d been there for her. She’d thought she’d never trust anyone again after he’d walked out of her life, and what had made it harder to bear was that, at the time, he hadn’t even attempted to tell her why. Since she’d met him again and he’d explained, she could see the dilemma for him, but no matter what, he’d acted selfishly and must have seen how isolated and alone she was. The contrast had been Bill Kelly, who’d ignored his own position in the force and stood by her, right until she’d stepped onto the ferry, swearing never to touch the soil of Ulster again.

  Macallan had learned a lot about herself since leaving Northern Ireland and starting her new life in Edinburgh. It had given her distance, time to see it all in context, and Harkins had taught her to accept the flaws in other people as well as her own. The failed relationship with John O’Connor should have been enough to turn her off relationships for life, but she knew that would be foolish. Fraser had wanted to avoid simply walking out on his family and, in truth, if he had done that, Macallan would have thought less of him. The commander had caught him in a hard place, and he’d folded in the face of a man who was simply in a stronger position than he was.

  She’d seen the change in Jack, the sorrow for all the things that had happened. He’d probably had as many sleepless nights as she’d had herself. She accepted that in a way they were both new people, and they both still cared deeply for each other – and now he was free.

  She thought about Harkins’ budgie again.

  ‘No contest then,’ she said, loud enough for a new arrival to swivel round and look at the woman who seemed to be talking to her.

  Macallan smiled and turned her eyes back to the arrivals board again.

  Jack Fraser walked through the gates, scanning the waiting friends and families for Macallan, and he saw her walking towards him with a broadening smile. As always she was dressed simply: jeans, a roll-neck sweater and a long dark coat. Her hair was cut short, and he could see the light from her green eyes across the concourse. It was all simple, but the effect was stunning. Had someone asked him, he would have been hard-pressed to say there was any feature that was outstanding, but that was it – Macallan was always understated, yet when she walked into a room she projected energy, intelligence and a complete lack of vanity. That was her trick on the world. A more physically attractive woman would seem to lose definition in her company.

  He felt a trembling in his stomach and realised he just felt glad to be where he was for the first time in an age.

  Macallan had already run through the scenario where they met at the airport and had decided on a hug and kiss on the cheek. She wanted to play it carefully as there was too much at stake for both of them. She’d thought they might become friends and that, perhaps, would be the wisest course. But when she walked the last few feet towards Fraser and saw what his eyes were telling her, the plan, like most plans, was filed in the ‘no-further-action’ box. Fraser dropped the briefcase from one hand and the suitcase from the other. They kissed each other and then embraced till most of the other arrivals had gone.

  ‘Let’s go; we’ve a lot of catching up to do.’ Macallan let him go and saw his eyes were full. ‘Come on, that’s my job,’ she said, smiling as she took him by the hand and led him to the car.

  As she drove through the darkening streets of Edinburgh, she realised that all she wanted was to be alone with him. He’d booked into a hotel, but she told him that he’d have to take a loss because he was staying at her place. ‘It’s huge and I can’t afford it, but it’s lovely. There’s a really nice spare room and you’ll be comfortable in there.’

  Fraser kept quiet. The spare room was good for him. He was just happy to be with her, and she was right to take it easy. He knew he wouldn’t sleep being in the same house, albeit in a different bedroom, but that was fine. What he couldn’t see in the semi-darkness was the mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

  ‘Just kidding! You’ve pulled.’ She smiled and suppressed her laugh, knowing how he’d have been struggling with the idea of the spare room.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Let’s just take it easy and see where it goes. I think the spare room is best.’ His face was serious, but Macallan had forgotten that Fraser was an advocate, a good one, and some said great. He let her struggle till he thought they had a draw. ‘Just kidding! You’ve pulled.’

  ‘God, look at us, Jack. Two of the most serious people I know teasing each other.’

  The night was all that Macallan and Fraser could have wanted. They talked, ate and drank till the early hours but never once looked at the clock. Without saying it they’d both decided to be as open and honest as possible, filling in the spaces that had opened up between their lives. He told her about his struggle with the divorce, the heartbreak of leaving his children and his attempts to build a new life. Macallan told him about Edinburgh, the people she’d met and some of the cases she’d managed. He’d followed the news reports and knew parts of the stories. She also told him about John O’Connor.

  ‘I am impressed, you know. To come here the way you did and build a new career is quite something. All that press coverage has made you quite a star.’

  Macallan looked into the dregs of the wine in her glass. ‘Well we have this unified force in Scotland now, but it’ll take years to settle down so I think I’m stuck here for the time being. That suits though – I love Edinburgh. It has all these sides, and it’s not a big city so everything’s close. A bit like Belfast without the guns and bombs.’

  She told him about the problem that was developing with Billy Nelson and he felt a knot of worry. ‘Watch what you do there. You were always involved with the Republican side. I prosecuted a few cases against the Loyalists and believe me they’re a whole new game.’

  They changed the subject and talked about rugby, Fraser admitting that he still played the odd game despite his supposed retirement and had been picking up new injuries every time. She shook her head but wasn’t in the least surprised.

  Around 3 a.m. Macallan stood up, took Fraser by the hand and put the lights out on their way to bed.

  17

  Eddie Fleming was the older twin by two minutes and had taken the call from Leith police station that his mother had been hurt and was o
n her way to hospital. Eddie presumed that she’d been pissed again, fallen and managed to break something this time. He was in his own flat and rang his sibling Pat, named after his father’s all-time favourite Hibs player.

  Pat was lying beside a girl he’d only met the night before and would probably never see again. It had been the result of too much drink, and he’d already decided that she was a dog. He wasn’t too upset by the call from his brother – he just couldn’t see the urgency.

  ‘What’s the rush? They’re probably pumpin’ her gut or somethin’. You know what she’s been like about Danny and the old man.’

  Eddie was the smarter of the two, knew what was what and was a reincarnation of his father at the same age. Pat had his brother Danny’s nature, hard and vicious, but no business sense.

  ‘Get your arse into gear and I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes,’ Eddie said. ‘Things are bad enough already. We’re what’s left, and how does it look if we can’t be fucked to go and see the old lady.’ He snarled it down the line so his brother wouldn’t miss the point.

  He put the phone down without waiting for a reply; he knew his brother wouldn’t dare ignore the order. Pat was hard, but Eddie was all that with a brain to match. He’d even excelled at school, which was a rarity for a Fleming, and university should have been the next step, but Eddie had known where his career path lay. It was the age of the gangster, the films glamorised the life and it seemed a better option to Eddie than sitting in an office staring at a computer for half the day, which seemed to be what three-quarters of the working population were doing for a job.

  Eddie stood just over six foot and a daily routine of weights and cardio had developed a hard body to match his even good looks. His hair was cropped short and a flawless complexion gave him an almost male-model look, but that was far from what Eddie Fleming was. He would have been difficult to tell apart from Pat, except that the younger man had a six-inch scar on his left cheek after he’d been slashed in a bar fight with some Hearts fans after a heated derby match.