by Chris Dolan
Still, all the more reason to track down Morag Boyd. There was no mention of her involvement in the Lanarkshire case, but she had been cited as a potential witness, perhaps in her capacity as an environmental campaigner, in a civil suit – which was why Maddy had had no direct contact with her – against Petrus. And now she was protesting at Fulton’s construction sites.
She put Morag Boyd’s name into her search engine. After a page or two she found an article about the woman being thrown out of a meeting in Maryhill Burgh Halls three years back. It was a day of talks on environmental health – everything from food safety to air pollution. It seemed that Morag hadn’t been the main troublemaker, but a woman she was with, a Catherine Maguire. Ms Maguire had made herself very unpopular. According to the two-paragraph piece in the Evening Times she had used “abusive and threatening language” before being asked to leave. Maddy checked back through her notes. Maguire was the other woman Coulter had seen with Morag at Belvedere construction site.
She’d forgotten about the drink with Manda, who’d contacted Dan. The pair of them came into her office just as she was leaving.
“Listen, guys. Sorry but something’s come up.”
“I don’t care,” Dan said. “It’s probably something you shouldn’t be doing anyway. At least not on a Saturday night.”
“And what, going to the pub is something I should be doing? Didn’t work out that way last Friday.”
There was no getting out of it. She went with them to Blackfriars and made sure she was at the bar first. She got wine for them and made sure the spritzer for herself was mostly sparkling water – she needed to drive out to Morag’s house.
“I know you, Maddy Shannon. You’ve gone all intense. Which means not only are you going to go all vanilla on us, you’re going to do something really stupid.”
“This Miller thing. I know it’s close to home and everything,” Manda smiled kindly at her, “but shouldn’t you back off a bit? For the moment.”
“No, no, Manda,” Dan said. “Let her go. Way things stand she’s still first choice for generalissimo when Max keels over, which is any day now. One more mistake and that job’s mine.”
Dan beamed at her, but Maddy knew he was half serious.
“You two have no idea what I’m doing. As a matter of fact I’m concentrating on an entirely different case.”
“Are ye, aye?” Dan laughed.
“What?” Manda asked.
“Petrus.”
“Still that?” Manda shook her head. An obsession of Maddy’s.
“Petrus is it?” Dan said knowingly. “Even from this distance I can see a connection with Miller and Crichton.”
“Then get your eye tested.”
“So. A case, ten years or more on the go, all but shelved… Where do you need to rush off to, on your own, on a Saturday night?”
“I’m not rushing anywhere. I’m here drinking with you, am I not?”
“You’ve hardly touched that drink, which looks to me, by the way, suspiciously like fizzy water. If you’re not going anywhere in a hurry, stay there and I’ll get you a proper drink.”
She had a choice. Take the huff, and get out of there now. Or give in and get a proper drink.
“Margarita.”
Three margaritas later she walked with Dan and Manda to Queen Street station. When they went to get their trains she waved them off as she walked towards the subway station. When they were out of sight, she veered off and hopped in a taxi.
Probably unwise to knock on Morag Boyd’s door at eleven at night, four drinks down. Was Morag the kind of woman who’d go to bed early on a Saturday night? Maybe she’d be out on the town. In which case, no damage done, apart from two taxi fares.
Thankfully the driver wasn’t in a talkative mood. A problem in Glasgow, the need to make an instant, common bond – nobody’s the boss here, a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns. Fine, except you ended up talking rubbish throughout the entire journey. But this guy said he was in for a tough night when the clubs come out, and slid his driver protection screen shut – mutual protection, from half an hour of inane conversation.
The Glasgow night hadn’t quite yet come to the boil. The street lights and shop signs sizzled in the smir, reminding Maddy of Blue Nile songs. The neons and the cigarettes… Do I love you? Yes I love you… Lassies in peerie heels tottering, midriffs bare to the chill, looking for love, or a fight, whichever came first. The taxi stopped at a red light beside two young men who gawped absently in at her. They looked like they’d just burrowed their way up from hibernating underground and hadn’t got used to even this half-light. Leaving town and the bright lights behind, the night got blacker, the streets wetter, slick and glassy.
The Belvedere site was like a moon crater, the massive hole in the ground more conspicuous than the new foundations half hidden in the night. There was a light on in a cabin. The nightwatchman presumably. The light flickered several times as someone crossed in front of it. To and fro, to and fro.
She paid the taxi, the rain more assertive this side of town, and the driver took off with more urgency than Maddy felt was necessary.
Climbing the stair, she could hear voices above. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” a woman was saying, a touch of anger in her voice.
“It’s only a job. Man’s got to earn a crust.”
“Aye, well, some of us know where to draw the line.”
Turning on to the landing of the second floor, Maddy saw that the voices were coming from Morag’s next-door neighbour. Cathy Maguire’s house. She had to cross by the door to get to Morag’s and, as she did, it opened wider and the man she’d seen with the little boy was backing out.
“I’ll see you later, Cathy.”
He almost ran into Maddy. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.
“You? What you doing up here?”
“I’m looking for a Mrs Morag Boyd?”
Cathy Maguire, hearing the voices, came out into the hall. “Who’s that?”
She’d be in her late forties, tall, her long black hair, dyed, hung down her back. Her eyes were naturally black and, right now, bristled with irritation. She stepped past her neighbour, taking control of the situation. “Can I help you?” She had a smoker’s voice, pleasingly husky like an old jazz singer’s.
“I was just telling this gentleman I’m hoping to catch Morag Boyd next door.”
“What d’ye want her for?”
“You wouldn’t be Mrs Cathy Maguire, would you?”
“You fair know a lot of names. Any chance of us knowing yours?”
The words were direct, dismissive, and the eyes still burned, but she put a smile on her face and relaxed her posture. A well-practised line in passive-aggression.
“Maddy Shannon. I’m from the procurator fiscal’s office. I was just hoping to—”
“You work long hours, Maggie, hen. Nearly midnight on a Saturday?”
Maddy tried to smile back. “Well I was passing, so…”
Maguire gave a throaty, almost cheerful laugh. “Passing my aunt Fanny.”
“Okay. I wasn’t. Just, once I’ve got a bee in my bonnet… I’m interested in your protest against Fulton Construction.”
That got Maguire’s interest, but she kept up the chutzpah. “ID.”
“Right, yes. Hang on.” Maddy looked in her bag for something that might satisfy the woman.
“Ach leave it. If you pulled out something official looking I wouldn’t believe it anyway. Kenny,” she said to the man, who had been standing there throughout, keeping as still as possible. “Away in and tell Morag we’ve got company. I’ll bring her through in a minute.” Kenny nodded to her, then again to Maddy as he squeezed past. “Mon through,” Maguire said.
The living room was a surprise. The usual items of furniture, a telly, coffee table, the smell of smoke not completely disguised by fresh air sprays. But the walls were covered in posters. In pride of place, over an electric fire with one bar lit was a naïve-style portrait of an Ame
rican-Indian woman with the words I, Rigoberta Menchú. Maddy remembered a little about Menchú. Didn’t she win the Nobel Peace Prize? For indigenous peoples’ rights. Then there had been what seemed to Maddy at the time some kind of smear campaign. On the wall by the door there hung a photograph of Maguire laughing joyfully amid a group of African women dressed in kaleidoscopic robes and headwraps. Cathy seemed to be the star of the show. Next to that a photograph of an inconspicuous if kindly looking elderly gent. The caption read, “The population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know it doesn’t know.” Reading that, Maddy thought she recognised the face now as Noam Chomsky’s. There were a couple of Yes posters from last year’s referendum, including one that Maddy had never seen before. The Joan Miró Spanish Civil War print with the “Aidez L’Espagne” redrawn to read “Aidez L’Ecosse”. Finally her eye fell on a black-and-white poster. A woman, her face completely hidden by a kind of balaclava, only her furious eyes showing, holding a machine gun, ready to fire.
Maguire and Maddy sat facing one another across the coffee table, on which were a pack of Rothmans and a lighter, and an open jotter full of hectic writing.
“Well, I’ve been visited by the polis, social workers, councillors, you name it, but never by a procurator fiscal.” Looking at her now, Maddy decided she was probably actually in her fifties, but striking, somehow younger looking despite the fags and what was obviously a long life of fighting. “I’m no’ even sure I know what a procurator fiscal is.” Maddy knew that was a ploy. She had the feeling this woman knew a lot about most things. “Does it mean I’m going to get arrested?”
“Do you think you should be?” Maddy calculated that Maguire was up for verbal fisticuffs. For a moment she thought she was wrong as the woman’s eyebrows knitted tightly. Then Maguire gave a long loud guffaw.
“Oh aye. Definitely. Sorry. My manners. Can I get you a cup of tea?”
“No thanks.”
“Something stronger?”
“I’d love to, but better not. I’d take a cigarette though?”
“Be my guest. I know the script – pretending to yourself you’ve given up and smoke OP’s.”
“OPs?”
“Other people’s. It’s fine. Help yourself. I do it all the time.”
Maddy lit up, the dry, dingy smoke at once depressing and quenching. Cathy Maguire folded her arms: “So. Explain.”
“I just wondered what your gripe with Fulton Construction is.”
“No, Maggie, hen. I said explain. This is my house, I’ll ask the questions.”
“Okay. Your name and Morag Boyd’s came up in a report concerning the murder of Julian Miller—”
“Funny how when a lawyer gets killed you all leap into action. Carry on.”
“I recognised Mrs Boyd’s name from a case I’d been preparing a few years ago. Petrus? A petrochemical company.”
“Aye, I know all about them. But so what? Morag complained about Petrus and now we’re on the case of Fulton. I can see that that might be a wee bit interesting. But you’re a fiscal, not a policewoman. Yet you come across town – twice. Aye, I know you were here a couple of days ago.” Maguire gave a contemptuous little smile. “Call us a close-knit community.”
“I’m in charge of this case, Mrs Maguire.”
“Cathy. Not that I’m trying to be pally. I just think you people hide behind formalities. Deal with me as I am.”
“Okay.” Maddy stubbed out the half-smoked ciggie, causing Cathy to frown.
“You’re ‘in charge of the case’.” Her frown turned to a look of amusement. The woman knew it was odd. “Fair do’s. And it stands to reason that me and Morag murdered Miller.”
“Of course not! I’m not saying that.”
“But you’re thinking, maybe. Why else would you be here?”
“I’m simply trying to put the pieces together, Cathy.”
“Two working-class women. With a chip on their shoulders. Schemies. Inured to violence. Hey presto. That it, Maggie?”
“Actually, it’s Maddy.”
“Aye, it would be.” Cathy Maguire got up, pocketed her fags and lighter. “C’mon then. We’ll go see Morag. Dinna fret. We promise not to stick a kitchen knife in your heid.”
Maddy followed her out of the house and through the open door into Morag Boyd’s. The two houses were mirror images of each other, but Morag’s hallway was brightly painted and cluttered with clothes and shoes, including a child’s pair and a small backpack. In the main room Morag was sitting watching TV with the sound turned down. The lottery quiz show. The walls were more brightly painted than Maguire’s, the whole room more traditional. Hanging on the walls were family photographs. Amongst them only one, small, picture. Beautifully coloured in reds and ochres it bore the words, “The Wee Yellow Butterfly”. Maddy thought it might be the cover of a book.
“Morag,” Maguire announced brightly, “this woman tells me you killed Julian Miller.”
Morag gave a tired smile, but couldn’t think of an answer to that.
“Seems Cathy likes her jokes, Morag.” Maddy went over to the woman who did not stand up. “My name’s Maddy Shannon. I’m from the procurator fiscal’s office.”
Morag smiled and nodded. She wasn’t being offhand, Maddy thought, she simply looked too exhausted to get up. “Hello.”
“I hoped maybe you could answer a few questions? They might lead to nothing, but it’s worth a try.”
“Sure. Carry on.”
“Do you remember Petrus, Morag? You were involved with a campaign against them.”
“There’s your connection right there. Petrus used to own the pharmaceutical factory on Creggan Street.”
“They weren’t actually the owners,” Cathy Maguire said. “The company was called Costello Laboratories. Petrus were both a supplier of materials and a buyer of end products. They had minority shares in Costello.” Maguire was clearly the meticulous researcher of the two.
“We’re pretty sure, but, that they were the real power,” Morag said.
“Five years ago dangerous levels of toxic waste were documented. Not enough, however, for any of you people to do anything about it.”
“I tried,” Maddy said. “Morag, you were involved in the attempt to bring a criminal case against Petrus.”
“Cathy too.”
“We came up against a couple of problems. International companies like Petrus are hard to pin down. Where were the decisions taken? The responsibility trail was muddled to say the least.”
“Well that’s what they do, big conglomerates like that. Supranational – isn’t that what they cry it? They’re bigger, and more powerful, than any government, so they get away with bloody murder.”
“It wasn’t just that. It was hard to make any indictment stick. I personally led a whole number of discussions on whether or not, under Scots law, a company could have mens rea.”
“I mind that,” Morag said, sitting up in her chair.
“Can an organisation, in and of itself, have evil intent? In criminal law we need a body, an accountable human being. I tried all kinds of angles – if we could prove a crime had been committed, then who benefitted from the proceeds of that crime? In the end of the day, although the criminal case is still technically open, it was decided that complainants should pursue the matter in the meantime through the civil courts.”
“Where it was kicked into the long grass again.”
From outside the door the voice of a young boy called out “Mummy!”
“Coming son,” Morag called back. But before she could get out her seat, Kenny put his head round the door. “It’s okay. I’ll see to him.”
“Thanks, Ken,” Morag smiled at him. “Tell him I’ll be through soon.” Maddy looked closely at her, and thought she probably was the woman she had seen at the Royal Infirmary with the little boy. Kenny, before leaving the room, glanced at Maddy. When she caught his eye, he nodded to her again, left and closed the door.
“What I’m interested in
now is if there is any connection between Petrus and your protest against Fulton.”
“Costello Laboratories was closed down, for no apparent reason—” Cathy said, interrupted by Morag: “Though we like to think it was the efforts of people like us that got them running.” Cathy took up the story again: “Fulton acquired the land – what, three years ago now, Morag?” Morag nodded. “And started building on top of the pharmaceutical factory. We’re very far from convinced that they sealed that site properly.”
“Do you have any proof of that?”
“Not directly,” Morag began, but Cathy Maguire put her hand up. “I think that’s enough for one night, eh? It’s the weekend and this woman here wants to say goodnight to her boy.”
“If I could just ask a couple more things…”
“With all due respect Miss – Shannon? – you’ve been less than useless to us in the past. I’d like to think that you’re now on our side and want to help. But I don’t. I don’t believe it for a single minute. Quite possibly you think you want to help. But that’s not how it works. Not how the system works. What you really want to do is find out who killed Julian Miller.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Why’d we want to kill a lawyer?” Morag asked, looking genuinely curious.
“Nobody’s saying you killed anyone!”
Cathy stood between the two of them. “I’ll see Miss Shannon out, hen. If we meet her again it’ll be on our terms. We’ll ask the questions.” She went to the door and held it open for Maddy. “We know how it works. You don’t give a tuppenny fuck about the likes of us. Shall we?”
As Maddy followed her to the door, her eye caught again the poster on the wall. Under the caption, “The Wee Yellow Butterfly”, written in smaller letters she read “The War Without Bullets”.