Evidence of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘Not sure. The murder squad have you as the main suspect but fuck all to back it up so you can deal with that. I’ll try and find out if there are any of the surveillance teams involved, but those guys keep it tight.’

  ‘I don’t want excuses. I pay you to know, so get on it.’ He hit the dashboard with the side of his fist and wished he was alone in a room with the junkie detective.

  ‘Okay, I’m on it, but I’m up to my eyes with this thing at the hotel.’ He had Nelson’s attention with one sentence.

  ‘What hotel thing?’

  ‘Some girl found in the basement with a ruptured kidney. We think it’s an accident but can’t find any ID or fuck all on her. Bit of a mystery, but she’s a fuckin’ honey. I’ve got the enquiry, but she’s still unconscious.’

  The line went quiet as Nelson tried to work out whether he’d just had a bit of luck or another problem. ‘Keep me informed about that one but don’t ask why. I’ll call you back later.’

  He put the phone down while Monk was still trying to think of something to say in reply, stared at the road ahead and decided that the news fell into the bit-of-luck category. If he was on a roll he decided that it was best to keep it going and move on some of his immediate problems.

  He took the turn-off for Perth and decided to park the car clear of the town centre and its frustrating one-way system. The light snowfall from earlier had cleared and the sky was brilliant blue so he decided to walk to the meet in the open park area of the South Inch. He needed to breathe the dry, cold air and settle the problems he had into some kind of order. His head was a mess, and later in the day he would have his test results. He’d tried to put it out of his head, but, no matter what he tried to turn his thoughts to, the diagnosis crept into his mind like a worm. So many possibilities and all he could think of was the worst.

  The streets were bustling with Christmas shoppers frantically buying up what they probably couldn’t afford and didn’t need. His watch told him he was early, and as he walked through the cobbled street in the pedestrian area he decided to brave the cold, grab a coffee and sit outside one of the line of restaurants and bars.

  A girl whose name tag told him she was Anna served him a steaming cup, and for the first time in days he ached for the taste of coffee.

  He lit up a cigarette and heaved in the smoke. It worked, and he felt the nicotine rush through his blood and heighten his senses. The coffee tasted as it should.

  He closed his eyes and just wanted to keep feeling the way he felt in that moment – no pain in his gut and anonymous in this town.

  The surveillance officer browsed through some books in a shop about a hundred yards from Nelson, where the windows gave him a perfect view. He could keep the eyeball safely and, even better, stay warm while he did so.

  The security-service officer put his paper into a rucksack when the train was about five minutes from Perth station. He sighed. He could have done without the job he was involved in and didn’t want to be there given the workload he had piling up and the fact his boss was on his back for results. He was based in the new spook HQ in Belfast that everyone in the province knew about. The other passengers would hardly have noticed him on the journey from Glasgow, and there wasn’t much to notice. In his mid-thirties, he bordered on okay-looking and dressed like the droves of outdoor types who headed from the overstressed cities and towns to the soothing hills of Perthshire.

  He was Nelson’s handler, and he was worried about the way everything was going. Nelson was acting like a cowboy. Despite all the effort he’d put into running him, the service were getting itchy and were close to taking the decision to dump him as a dangerous, out-of-control agent. But the handler was determined to get the job done with him, and then they could do what the fuck they liked as far as he was concerned.

  The security service had identified Billy Nelson long before he’d half-murdered the Afghan boy, although that had alerted them that he needed careful handling. He was just too valuable to miss. They knew from old SB intelligence that he was UVF and knew why the leadership had pointed him at the Army. The service watched him closely and saw him cross a barrier and become friends with Catholic soldiers. They wanted Jackie Martin’s head on a plate, and Nelson was a long-term investment to get to the main man.

  They knew that Martin still sat on enough arms to start a small war and had only paid lip service to the decommissioning of weapons during the peace process, and he had an added target on his back because he’d tortured and killed a security-service agent who he’d mistakenly thought worked for Special Branch.

  When Nelson had got into trouble they’d made their move and told him he could either do twenty years or come on board with them. He’d resisted but they’d shown him that Martin was no more devoted to the Loyalist cause than Martin McGuinness, and when Nelson had seen the evidence he’d realised how all those boys that had lost their lives had just been used by men like Martin. Now those men were using the peace to fill their pockets and exploiting people in other ways. He’d agreed to help them get to Martin but was smart enough to know that the service was using him as well. If it kept him clear of prison he’d go along with it, but as far as he was concerned, he’d do what was good for Billy Nelson and nothing else.

  Nelson’s phone rang and he picked it up without looking at the number – he already knew who it was.

  ‘I’m not far away. Where are you?’

  Nelson was happy where he was but the spook stuck to the rules of his tradecraft and said he’d meet him at the riverside on the broad parkland of the South Inch. No one could get near them without being noticed, and there were a range of escape routes if they needed to separate quickly. It happened: meetings could be arranged at the other end of the country and you could still bump into your next-door neighbour on a day out.

  Nelson walked across the park towards the river. It was too early in the day to be busy; there was just the odd dog walker, and he took one of the seats next to the wide River Tay. He opened his paper, didn’t hear his handler approaching from behind.

  ‘How goes it, Billy?’ The home-counties accent had been clipped by five years in the Guards. ‘This is a beautiful place. Just a pity it’s always freezing.’ He walked round to sit next to Nelson and noticed the change in his appearance.

  ‘Jesus, are you okay? You look like you’ve had seven nights on the tiles.’ He said it with what sounded like concern, which embarrassed Nelson. He didn’t want to talk about it – and certainly not to a spook.

  ‘Just a bug in the gut. I’m on the mend so you don’t have to send me a get-well card or anything, Bill.’ He paused and lit up a cigarette, which he knew annoyed the fanatical non-smoker beside him.

  ‘By the way, I always mean to ask: is Bill your real name?’

  The handler smiled and knew that there was no point in bullshitting a man like Billy Nelson. ‘Of course not; it’s Mary.’

  They both thought that was enough foreplay and the handler got to the point. ‘We need to move on the Jackie Martin thing.’ He paused to watch for the effect on Nelson but there was nothing, and it was what he’d expected. ‘The job’s been running long enough, and my masters want him taken out now. What do you think?’

  ‘I’ll make the call today, and anyway I’m ahead of the game. There’s a guy from Glasgow wants to do business, and I’ll move over to him once Jackie’s out of the way.’

  The spook shook his head. ‘You’re sure he won’t smell something? He’s a crafty old bastard is our Jackie.’

  ‘You worry too much. Just you make sure that everything is in place to take him out. I’ve enough problems without Jackie Martin on my case.’ The tension in Nelson’s voice was obvious – another problem would be the last straw.

  ‘That’s no problem. Once I get the call I’ll make sure a police team take him out nice and cleanly with no loose ends. Who’s the Glasgow man by the way? I need to know these things. Rules is rules and all that.’

  ‘A guy called Magic McGinty. Fuckin’ nut
ter and haven’t met anyone quite like him.’

  The spook didn’t seem that interested, but that was what spooks were good at. The fact was he was definitely interested.

  ‘By the way,’ he told Nelson. ‘You’re under surveillance, but you might know that already. I wouldn’t worry about it – just make sure they don’t see you with a bag of happy dust in your hand.’ He was completely relaxed and smiled at the pained expression on Nelson’s face. ‘Look, if there’s a move against you I’ll let you know. It’s only you, and they’re not covering the rest of your team apart from checking their phone billing. So just make sure you get them to do any business.’ He lied perfectly and his own mother wouldn’t have noticed the deception. The agent knew full well that as soon as Jackie Martin was banged up, the service would throw Nelson to the nearest pack of wolves.

  ‘Okay, Bill or Mary or whatever the fuck your name is.’ Nelson was reassured by the spook’s confidence. They shook hands and he watched the agent head along the riverside away from him. He had no reason to disbelieve the spook, but he wondered why the police hadn’t tied him to the girl in the hotel if they were following him. He would never know that it was just down to luck and a lack of experience on Thompson’s part.

  ‘From the eyeball, that’s the target and associate parting. What do you want us to do, Jimmy?’

  McGovern knew that the meeting had to be important but splitting the surveillance team in two was nearly always a mistake and the rule of thumb was to stay with the target. The riverside walk ran for miles, and there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t lose the unknown somewhere along the way.

  ‘Stick with the target,’ he replied. ‘Nothing else we can do.’ He was sure in his gut that the other man was important, but he knew what he had to do. In a city the likelihood was that a car was nearby, but in the sticks surveillance became much more difficult and greater distance had to be left between the watchers and the target.

  Nelson walked slowly back to the town centre and thought he would have another coffee before heading back to Edinburgh and whatever lay ahead in the hospital. Now he knew he was under surveillance he’d have to take care, but he knew that the spook was right – he just had to make sure he kept his hands off the gear and said nothing on his registered phone. The news confirmed that Donnie Monk wasn’t doing the business though, and once he worked out what to do with the problem at the hotel he’d take care of him.

  He sipped his coffee and thought about the girl who’d kneed him in the balls then picked up the phone and called Donnie Monk again, answering the detective’s ‘Hello?’ by telling him to ‘Shut the fuck up and listen.’

  ‘I’m going to get one of the boys to meet you and give you a quarter kilo of nose sugar, some tabs and scales. I want you to go to the girl’s flat and rig it up like she’s a dealer, okay? Don’t talk – I’m not finished. I’ve got a key to her place and know where she lives. Now you can talk, but I only expect you to say, “I’ve got it, Billy.” ’

  There was a long moment of silence and Monk was sweating from the combination of toxins in his body, self-loathing and the fact that he was in bed with the devil.

  ‘Christ, do you know what you’re asking me to do?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling the rubber-heel squad are taking an interest in me as it is. The girl nearly died, but then I guess you would know that.’ Just for a moment Monk felt like the cop he’d been all those years ago – a cop who would have spat in the eye of a man like Billy Nelson. But the brief flare of anger sputtered then died on the truth that he was a junkie and he was talking to the man who fed him his little moments of oblivion.

  ‘Just do the fuckin’ thing and if I find out you’ve had a sniff of the goods then we have a problem. Do you hear me?’ Nelson didn’t have to pretend with Monk. It was just so easy to despise the man. ‘I need her to be discredited, just in case she makes any wild allegations, if you know what I mean. Think on the positives: you get all the credit for another brilliant detection and the citizens don’t like foreigners, especially when they’re pros. It’s win-win.’

  Monk apologised to Nelson; he was beaten and said he’d do the necessary at the girl’s flat. He put the phone down and looked in the bathroom mirror of the pigpen that he called home. He was fat, and his face was beginning to look like someone had blown it up with a bicycle pump. His faded blue shirt was covered in dark patches of sweat and he stank. He promised himself, in the way that addicts do, that this was his last day on the crap and that he’d get himself together.

  He thought again about what he was about to do for Billy Nelson and started to shake like a man on the trapdoor.

  He leaned over, snorted the last line of powder from the toilet cistern, followed it with a shot of cheap whisky and then sat in the semi-darkness of his lounge waiting for the call from Nelson’s boys. He was going to take delivery of the gear he would plant at the home of the girl he could safely presume Nelson had nearly killed for whatever reason. He shook his head.

  ‘What the fuck’s it got to do with me? I’m only the detective on the case,’ he said quietly into the emptiness of the flat.

  Monk was the only person who’d been in it for nearly two years, and it had gone well past the point where he would invite another human being in to witness the evidence of his ruin.

  He leaned his head back, closed his eyes and worried about his future.

  On the road back to Edinburgh Nelson called Jackie Martin after running the script through his mind a few times. Martin was no fool; he’d survived as long as he had because he was born with the instincts of a sewer rat and the legend went that he’d avoided two set-ups in the past through sheer instinct. If the plan messed up and Nelson was exposed then it was all over for him.

  He shook his head. It would be worth the risk. As far as he was concerned, Martin was a parasite and no loss to the human race.

  He pulled into a lay-by and called Martin’s number.

  The surveillance car with the eyeball had no choice but to pass him and warned the rest of the following convoy. ‘He’s making a call and we have to overshoot.’

  ‘Okay, boys, just keep going and head back to Edinburgh in case you’ve been compromised. Mark the time and let the intelligence boys know when you get there and we’ll see who he called. Might be something to do with the UDM.’

  McGovern turned to the female surveillance officer with him in the car. ‘I feel it in my bones, Dawn – this boy is going to fall big time. I just know it.’

  ‘How’s it going there, Jackie?’ Nelson said it in as friendly a tone as he could muster.

  ‘Well now, I’m okay. It’s that time of the month so what do you need?’ Martin was using a phone registered to a second cousin; it was one of the dozen he kept rotating, and this one was for talking business with Billy Nelson. His eyes narrowed when Nelson asked him for nearly double the normal consignment, and he sat forward when he added a request for another couple of machine pistols and ammo.

  ‘What the fuck, Billy? Are you starting a war over there? From what I hear you’re causing enough bother without more artillery.’ His voice had an edge, and Nelson wasn’t surprised that he knew, given the coverage in the press.

  ‘That’s all exaggerated, and I had to take care of the opposition. You’d have done the same.’ He tried his best to sound unconcerned.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I would have done, boy. Just don’t start the Third World War over there. This is business – my business and you work for me. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’ Nelson was imagining his hand round the bastard’s throat.

  ‘In fact I’m coming across with the goods. I want to check out the place and might send a few more people over to help out. I might move myself. I’m fuckin’ sick of Belfast and need a change of scene.’

  Nelson smiled, realising that his luck had changed – Martin was volunteering to walk into the trap free of charge.

  ‘I’ll call you later with the details,’ Martin said and put the phone down.
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  ‘Cheers, Jackie, you fat fuck.’ Nelson put the radio on and felt good. There was no pain in his gut and it looked like he was going to do some business with Magic McGinty after all.

  Before continuing his drive back to Edinburgh he called Fisher and McLean and told them to meet him at his house.

  A flurry of snow appeared even though the sky was still blue and clear.

  Fisher and McLean were waiting for him when he arrived but there were no greetings or smiles, and Nelson realised that the men he’d once called friends now looked at him as if he was wearing a police uniform.

  They walked into his house and hardly a word was exchanged while he poured them a drink. He told them what he wanted delivered to Monk but didn’t feel the need to say why. He didn’t have to – they knew that he was going to visit the girl and had seen the local papers. They’d already worked out that she was Nelson’s handiwork but couldn’t understand why, when she was half-dead, he needed to plant enough dope to get her six years.

  They also knew and had discussed the fact that Clark didn’t know about the girl and wondered how he’d react. He’d already fallen out of love with Nelson, and there was no telling what he’d do once he found out. The saving grace for Nelson was that Clark wouldn’t be able to go toe to toe with him for a long time – if ever.

  ‘Is this necessary?’ Fisher said it in as even a voice as he could muster, not wanting to overheat the situation with the problems that were developing in the team. ‘Christ, the girl is lucky to be alive from what I read, so why do this?’

  Nelson necked the drink and sat back in his chair, staring at Fisher and trying to read the signs. None of them would have dared question him in the past, and if Fisher was looking for signs of weakness he had to prove that he was making a mistake. He knew that they had to have seen the physical changes that had taken place in him and like rats they could smell carrion a long way off.