‘Jesus, I never thought I’d see the day I’d have to carry Mick Harkins into the pub rather than out.’ Macallan got a hold of his arm and helped him slowly navigate the steps down into the half-lit bar where they’d put the world to rights so many times. She felt a twinge of sadness at seeing such a proud and independent man struggle to the point where he needed a helping hand to get into a bar.
The place was quiet and she managed to claim one of the comfier seats for her friend. He settled in and it was like old times, but the journey had obviously tired him, and she realised he had a long way to go.
‘What’ll it be then?’
‘Well it’s a bit of a celebration, me still being alive, so I’ll have the usual. A double goldie and a half of their finest lager.’
A couple of rounds seemed to put the life back in Harkins, and he demanded that Macallan fill him in with all the latest news from the force. She knew how much he missed the gossip, like all ex-detectives. She gave it all, good and bad, including her problems with the chief super.
‘I know the guy of old,’ Harkins said before finishing the remains of his beer. ‘He’s the world’s biggest tosser.’
She had to interrupt at that point. ‘But you say everyone’s the world’s biggest tosser!’
She got ignored. ‘He started off in the Met, and I’ve got a mate down there who worked in the same station as him in their probation days. Apparently he came close to being emptied for groping the cleaners. Can you believe it?’
She nodded. ‘You bet I can believe it. Five minutes with him makes me feel like having a shower.’
He pointed at the empty glass. ‘You don’t expect a man in my condition to go to the bar, do you?’
She shook her head, already feeling the warming effect of the booze, which they were consuming too quickly, but that’s how Harkins liked it so that’s how it would be.
‘I knew there’d be a catch,’ she said as she got up to head for the bar. Then she paused. ‘Look, before we end up as wreckage, did you hear that Billy Drew got out on appeal today?’
Harkins smiled as if he’d been asked an innocent question by a child. ‘I may be retired, but once a detective, always a detective. I knew as soon as you did. Still have my sources, you know. Fuck him; if he comes near me I’ll batter him to death with my walking stick.’
‘That’s the end of that then,’ Macallan said and wondered why she’d worried about the man.
The rest of the night reminded Macallan why she had called Harkins. She let her hair down, forgot the problems in the job and just let it all go. He was in an ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mood and ended up being warned by the pub manager for singing a Beatles medley and using one of his sticks as a pretend guitar. By that point her vision was blurred, and she grinned lopsidedly when he threatened the manager with his pretend guitar. Nevertheless, her survival instincts kicked in as she realised that being arrested for a breach of the peace might make the chief super’s day so she told Harkins it was time to go. It took an effort and a half to get him to the top of the steps and into a taxi.
She leaned in and grinned at Harkins, who grinned back.
‘I certainly told that fucking upstart. Last time I take my custom in there,’ he slurred, trying to fumble a cigarette out of the packet.
‘I think that’ll devastate him. I should take you home, but I’m not so you’ll just have to crawl into your flat . . . okay?’ She closed the door of the taxi and waved like a five-year-old girl. The taxi driver looked sorry that he’d stopped as he moved off.
Macallan felt marginally sharper by the time she’d got back to her flat and fumbled her way inside. It was after 11 p.m. but she was at the stage where time had lost its meaning and all she wanted was to call Jack Fraser. Sober it would have been a bad idea, but Macallan wasn’t sober, and she just wanted to speak to someone who cared, because she was lonely.
‘Grace? Are you okay?’ His voice was thick – he’d obviously been asleep already.
‘Just wanted to say hello and that I’m missing you.’ She tried hard to concentrate but her head was dive-bombing and it was hard to make sense even to herself.
Fraser smiled and rubbed his head to shake the remnants of sleep from his brain. This was definitely a first for Grace Macallan. ‘I thought it was always the guys who did this to the women. You’ll be telling me you love me next.’
‘I do love you. You know that.’ She thought that it seemed like the right thing to say, and she heard a soft laugh on the other end of the phone.
Fraser knew Macallan well enough to know that the call was probably a symptom of a bastard of a day or a bastard of a job. The call warmed him though – it felt like the wounds of the past were healing well and that they might just make it. He hadn’t planned it, but after she’d rambled till she’d run out of words or the will to say any more, he told her he was coming over for a short visit.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll remember in the morning so I’ll text you with confirmation. Get some sleep, and I’ll see you on Friday night.’
But she was already asleep, the phone still in her hand.
He lay back on the pillows, wide awake now, but it didn’t bother him. He knew that he’d wasted too much precious time not being with Macallan and promised himself he was going to remedy that. She was a special woman, and he felt he didn’t deserve her, but he couldn’t afford to lose her a second time.
His mind spun the thought on a loop for an hour before he fell asleep again.
24
During the period between Macallan and Fraser falling asleep, a taxi moved across the city from the Georgian piles of the New Town towards the sprawling Gilmerton housing estate that pressed out to the rolling countryside of Midlothian on the south side of the city. There was little evidence of its ancient mining traditions remaining, and like the other peripheral estates of Edinburgh it had suffered its share of crime and drugs-related violence over the years.
Kristina Orlova had arrived home after leaving her last client, a married businessman. He’d paid her well above the odds, and because of his age and serious lack of fitness she hadn’t had to work too hard to please him. Like most of her clients, he was flattered to be in the company of a woman who looked like she could compete in a Miss World competition.
She slipped off her coat and opened a bottle of cold white wine to help her wind down. The phone rang, and she tried to sound enthusiastic when she found it was Andy Clark asking if he could come round. She just wanted to wrap herself up in bed, but that wasn’t going to be an option.
When she came off the phone she made the call to Pat Fleming to tell him Clark was on his way. He told her she was a good girl and promised her a nice bonus and dinner.
Andy Clark stared out of the taxi window but took nothing in. He couldn’t get his mind off Kristina. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and despite what she did for a living, he was convinced that he could take her away from all that and that they could be happy together. He was sick of his life and wished that Billy Nelson had never come back to Belfast. What they’d done to the Fleming woman haunted him, and he struggled to sleep at night. He was swallowing prescription pills in double doses and struggling to keep it together, and now Nelson had noticed that something was wrong with him and was on his case every day. Kristina was the only good thing in his life, and he’d become obsessed with the idea that she was the key to escaping his past and his nightmares.
When Orlova heard the soft knock at the door she breathed deeply and tried to calm her nerves. She’d managed three glasses of wine in the time she’d waited for him – had taken it quickly to get the calming benefit of the alcohol. She didn’t dare let him notice anything unusual, but she could have done without his company. He was trying to talk her into becoming an item with him and spent a fortune trying to convince her that it was a good idea. He never pushed her for sex, which was a bonus for a young woman who’d already decided that there was hardly a man on God’s earth who deserved her love or
affection.
Orlova had arrived in the UK three years earlier, having been conned by a Lithuanian trafficking gang. She’d been raped to show her exactly what she was worth then stuck in a cesspit in Chelsea servicing a string of creeps. The one girl she’d heard complain was never seen again, but her reward for staying quiet was to discover that she would never pay off the interest on the supposed cost of transporting her to her miserable new existence.
Despite her situation she decided not to sink into a pit of mindless obedience but rather watched and waited for her opportunity. She knew one of the minders liked to drink himself unconscious when it was his turn to guard the women working in the brothel, and her chance had come one night when not only was the drunk slumped over his desk but the other guard was with one of the girls. She left her customer dressed in a nappy and managed to get all the week’s takings from the open safe behind the comatose bouncer. The bonus in the safe was a half-kilo of good quality cocaine, which would sell wherever she was.
She’d slipped out into the London streets and become anonymous. Her looks were intact and she had enough money to keep well clear of London and anyone looking to make her pay. Knowing that she would be killed if she went anywhere near her old employers again, she’d headed north.
As a promising student in Vilnius, Orlova had loved to read about Scotland and its castles and told herself that she would visit it one day, so Edinburgh immediately became her destination of choice. She had managed to get a job in a Leith café and one morning served Joe Fleming with his daily portion of bacon, eggs and black pudding. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her and she’d already known he was a bit of a name in the area. In fact he’d been so taken with her that he’d offered her a deal she couldn’t refuse: look after him when he was in the mood and she could work for herself but advertise through his escort agency, and he wouldn’t take a penny. If she didn’t fancy a client then she didn’t need to bother. Joe told her he’d only put the loaded business guys her way and he’d been as good as his word. He’d also treated her well compared to previous employers and most of the men she’d known, and she’d taken to the life and the flow of cash. By her calculations, two or three years of the money she was making would set her up well for the future, or perhaps get her back to Vilnius to start again. The other possibility was that some wealthy client would propose and make her an honest woman.
Andy Clark was a good-looking boy, but he bored her and was like a dog frightened to let her out of his sight. He talked too much and hadn’t realised that she was indirectly involved with the Flemings. She’d struggled to hide her shock when she’d realised that Clark was one of the Belfast gang, who according to the rumour mill were being tagged for the murder of Joe and Danny. She’d realised that she was caught between her new relationship with Pat Fleming and Andy Clark, and the potential for her to get caught in the cross-fire of the warring factions was real and worrying.
Orlova had wondered what Joe would have made of her relationship with his son, but if it was true that Joe was gone then she could put that aside. In the end she’d decided to put her money on the Flemings, but only because she knew nothing about the men from Northern Ireland, and Pat had seemed pleased when she’d told him, promising her a big bonus if she helped to set up Clark.
When she heard the soft knock at the door, she had already put on a dressing gown and scrubbed the make-up off her face. She didn’t need it, but her last client liked her to plaster it on for some reason she left to his own little fantasies.
Clark was wide-eyed and spaced on pills, and she had to work hard on the act that she was suffering from a stomach bug. It took a couple of hours to talk him down, plus a promise of a special night out later in the week. He seemed pleased and just wished he could have stayed to look after her, but when he left the flat in the early hours it was with a familiar feeling of dejection. He wondered when she’d make him feel like he was all that she wanted. That’s how it was for him.
He stopped on the stairway, took a bottle from his pocket and dropped three of the small white pills into his hand before throwing them down his neck. He felt exhausted and shivered in the cold air.
As he opened the main door to the flats he pulled out his mobile and tried to focus on the numbers to call a taxi. The cold night air turned his breath to white smoke as he stepped out onto the sparkling pavement, and he screwed up his face as he avoided the remnants of a frozen pavement pizza that some upright citizen had heaved up after a hard night on the happy juice.
Eddie Fleming hit him with the first one. He used a pickaxe handle, taking Clark across the side of the knee to make sure he went down and wasn’t going to get up and make a fight of it.
The Belfast man gasped at the searing pain that surged from the shattered bone up through his thigh and buttock.
His two assailants stood back for a moment as he rolled onto his back and looked up at them, his face stretched in agony as he gasped for air. When his eyes cleared he saw the two men were wearing Halloween masks, but they were no more than dark shapes with the harsh light of the street lamps behind them. He knew there wasn’t a thing he could do and rolled onto his face again, just hoping he would live.
The assault took no more than a minute. The Flemings had decided on a beating rather than a killing because they didn’t want the police after them as well as Nelson. They knew Clark wouldn’t make an official complaint, and the message would get through that if the Belfast boys thought they’d take Edinburgh with no reaction then they’d miscalculated badly.
Orlova had put out the lights and stood to the side of the window that looked out the front of the building. She saw Clark fall and watched the blows rain down on the man who’d said he loved her and wanted to spend his life with her. She gulped back another glass of wine.
When they calmly walked away from the motionless figure of Andy Clark she went into her room and sat on the edge of her bed, wondering what would happen next.
When Pat Fleming called her about half an hour later she still hadn’t moved.
‘You okay?’ He said it lightly, as if nothing had happened.
‘I’m okay, Patrick.’ She liked to use his full name.
‘Is he still outside?’
‘I’ll go and look.’
When she opened the door to her lounge she saw the trace of a blue light beating a dull arc round the room. She looked outside and saw the paramedics lifting Clark onto a stretcher. There were a few lights on in the flats and two uniformed policemen talking into their radios. As she watched, an unmarked car stopped, and the two men in suits who emerged seemed to take control.
‘They’re taking him away in an ambulance and the police are there,’ she said quietly, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
‘No problem, honey. I’ll see you tomorrow. Sleep tight.’
She went into the kitchen and opened another bottle of wine.
Across town, Pat turned to the old barmaid, who pulled the sheets back and gestured for him to join her. He’d put aside for the time being that he was in love with Kristina Orlova, who at the same moment was wondering whether she’d made the wrong call.
25
Billy Nelson bought a paper on his way to get breakfast on Leith Walk. When he wanted a decent fry-up he always went to the same place. He knew it was a mistake in his game (never develop habits – they can kill you), but sometimes there are urges that overcome sound logic. Bacon and eggs with all the extras was one of them.
His stomach had been eating him up over the previous couple of days. He’d finally given in and made an appointment with a GP, who’d referred him for tests, and all he could do now was wait till he heard back from the hospital. He hated all quacks and had made a lifetime habit of avoiding them, aside from a near-death experience in Afghanistan, when a bomb blast had killed one of his mates and ripped a chunk of flesh from his leg. Another couple of inches to the left and the artery would have taken a hit and he wouldn’t have had to worry about a bellyache. He h
ad only one more day to wait on the results but the days had dragged with the uncertainty of what they would tell him.
The pain had eased off at last, and suddenly he’d been ravenous so the only thing that was going to do the trick was a full-fat breakfast. One of the things he missed about Belfast was the heart-stopping Ulster fry, but the Scots did a fair impression.
He always felt safe enough in the morning and believed in the old adage that criminals didn’t like doing any business before noon. And aside from the food he liked the old-fashioned café for its ambience, and the Turkish waitress whose smile could melt the ice freezing on the windows.
She dazzled Nelson again as he entered, making him feel like he was the only customer she’d ever served, and settled himself down in a four-seater booth, which gave him a degree of privacy but still allowed him to see the door and any unwelcome customers. The last thing he needed was some punter to engage him in a conversation about the weather, or the state of Scottish football, which as far as he could see had about as much life in it as Joe Fleming’s corpse.
No more than three hundred metres from the door of the café McGovern directed the surveillance team to take up their positions to cover Nelson when he left. He was the operational commander until Thompson took over with a fresh team later in the evening. A footman deployed to pass the café and check whether Nelson was in on his own reported back within a minute that there was only one other customer apart from Nelson, and he was at a separate table.
Evidence of Death Page 21