Lies of the Land

by Chris Dolan

  Coulter unlocked his phone again. “I’ll get a detail on him now.”

  Maddy felt this urge to move, to take some kind of action, but she had no idea what. Alan was right – they really didn’t know anything for sure yet. More, it just didn’t sound right to her, that Nairne would be party to something not only so malicious, but premeditated, planned out, over months, years probably. She didn’t know the man well, but she trusted her judgement on people. Forbes Nairne was haughty, vain, but so were many powerful men. She always felt those were the kinds of traits she herself was lacking to be really successful. But Nairne wicked? He was nearing the end of a long illustrious career. Not everyone had always agreed with his rulings, his interpretation of Scots law, but few would imagine that he had ever been purposefully dishonest. Unless it was a late-career moment of madness, a crazy pension plan. Or maybe that impeccable career has been littered with wrongdoing and misconduct that he’d managed to cleverly conceal. Even if that were true, she still felt this urge to protect him.

  A mere depute PF didn’t have contact details for such grandees, she had no idea where he was, and anyway Coulter was organising proper protection for him. There was nothing to suggest the judge was in any immediate danger. Whoever was doing all this killing couldn’t know that the investigation now had a vital clue and, if they wanted to finish their business, they might have to speed the process up.

  Then again, it seemed to Maddy that the killer hadn’t shown any signs to date of giving a monkey’s what the police knew or didn’t know.

  The need to move, be active, reminded her that Louis was waiting for her downstairs. The man who had flown across the Atlantic, at some genuine personal and actual cost, she had left sitting in a hospital canteen, without even giving him any sterling to buy a coffee.

  With Coulter on his phone and Maddy lost in thought they ended up downstairs in a different part of the hospital. In order to find the café they had to go outside and walk round to the entrance of the older part of the buildings. There, at the door, presumably having another cigarette, was Morag, and standing next to her Cathy Maguire and a man Maddy at first thought was Kenny. Approaching them, both she and Coulter recognised the third figure to be Joe Harkins.

  “Have they taken Jason in, Morag?” Maddy asked.

  The woman just nodded.

  There was something in the positioning of the group, Cathy and Harkins standing closer to each other than either was to Morag, that made Maddy think those two were more than just friends and neighbours.

  “Kenny’s still up there.” Morag looked over at the busy road beyond the gate. “I can’t wait any longer. Got to get back to work.” Her tone was lonely and sad, like the sound of the collared dove Maddy woke to some mornings.

  “Me too,” said Cathy, grounding a fag end grimly under her toe. “You taking the car?”

  Morag shook her head. Maddy could see that every time she spoke the woman was in danger of breaking into tears. “Leaving it for Kenny. He’s going to stay here for a while. Not that there’s anything…” she stopped before her voice gave way. “You carry on, Cathy. Catch ye later.”

  Cathy Maguire took her at her word and marched off without another glance at any of them. It was on the tip of Maddy’s tongue to ask her for a cigarette – the craving came over her, sudden and sharp – but now she watched her dash away, head down, checking her watch twice. Must be late for work.

  Morag turned to Joe Harkins. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Joe put his hand on her shoulder and nodded. “He’ll be fine, Morag. He’s a brave boy.”

  “Aye,” she said. “No point in you staying here any longer either, Joe. They won’t let you back in upstairs.”

  “I’ll hang aboot, see if Kenny wants a pint.”

  “Wouldn’t bother. I think he’ll want his own space, Joe. If we can’t be wi’ Jason, we’d both rather be on our own.”

  “Aye. Right. Okay.”

  Morag put her hands in her coat pockets and walked off towards the busy road beyond the gates.

  Harkins didn’t budge. He looked over at Coulter who was exchanging texts and emails on his phone with, Maddy thought, almost teenage dexterity. She knew Alan was aware of Harkins’s gaze but was refusing to acknowledge it. The watchman looked at her, then back at the inspector, still studiously ignoring him. The two or three steps it took to plant himself right in front of Coulter seemed to Maddy to be in slow motion. Coulter finally looked up at him in a kind of decelerated motion too.

  “Go on.” Coulter said.

  Another pause, before Harkins spoke one word, blankly, clinically: “Kenny.”

  Coulter nodded. In that second or two there was an entire exchange between the two men. The name one had wanted and the other had known and withheld. Time wasted, a man possibly needlessly killed. And, why now? Why wait until this moment? The answer to that was in Harkins finally breaking the stand-off between them. When he looked away, and up, towards the sky and the wards that towered over them (“tall building reaching up in vain”, Blue Nile), Maddy thought she saw the shine of tears in his eye.

  Coulter about-turned and ran up the steps, disappearing into the hospital. Maddy watched Harkins’s shoulders slump. He shrugged at her, and ambled off into the city morning. He didn’t look like a man who was running away, though he knew that, whatever happened now, the police would soon be knocking on his door.

  Maddy’s instinct was to follow Alan. But she managed to resist it. She wasn’t sure, anyway, that she wanted to witness what was probably about to happen. Coulter would be at this very moment racing up to the surgical ward and calling for backup. Harkins had sold the guns to Kenny Boyd. At the very least Kenny was about as prime a suspect as you could get. For two murders and a possible culpable homicide. He had been on everyone’s list for weeks. The problem was – and surely still is, she thought – that his alibis all checked out. For both murders, Crichton’s fall, even the bullet being left outside her own door. They’d all been vouched for – Kenny and Morag and Cathy.

  You’re on leave, Maddy. It’ll take its own course. Nothing good could come of her interfering again now. Louis’ waiting.

  Except he wasn’t. He was nowhere to be seen in the café. And his mobile was turned off. She asked if there was another tea shop and was told, yes, one had been recently opened in the new part of the hospital complex. To get to that she’d have to go outside into the street again and retrace her steps back to the new building. Before setting off she checked that no one had seen an American sitting on his own, or maybe asking for her.

  “Naebody’s been asking for you, hen, but aye there was a big American fella. Copper, is he?”

  Extraordinary that even doubtlessly law-abiding café staff in Glasgow can pinpoint a policeman. Including one from another country. The canteen lady had no idea where Louis had gone. Heading back out Maddy tried him on her phone again. This time she got him. “Sorry, I was held up.”

  “No worries. Want me to take you home yet?”

  “And here was me hoping for a fancy lunch.”

  “The way you’re dressed?”

  She kept forgetting. She was not her mother’s daughter. Rosa, wrapping and selling chips, had changed her apron every hour; when Packie had left her, turning their lives inside out, Rosa di Rio put her best dress on under the aprons and took more, not less, care of her make-up. When push came to shove you dressed up, not down. Maddy realised that her baggy joggers and unironed shirt were emblems of how middle class she had become.

  “Okay let’s go home first.”

  Like Morag, it now dawned on her. In her good dress for the day her son was being taken in for a potentially life-threatening operation. Kenny too, now that she thought about it. He had a suit on. She’d never seen the man so formally dressed before. As she walked over to the car park to meet Louis she felt the need again for nicotine. But cadging a fag off a worried mum would have been crass. Harkins, too, had been tussling with bigger demons.

  T
hey were all smokers. Kenny and Morag’s alibi for the morning of Miller’s murder had been that they were here, vouched for by nurses and doctors. But how long would it take to walk or drive from the Royal to Merchant’s Tower, fire a bullet, and come back? It was a complicated building the hospital and only certain areas where you could smoke. Nobody would think twice if you went off for a ciggie and didn’t come back for half an hour. Even three quarters – enough time, particularly early morning and mid-evening when the traffic was light, to go west, to Maddy’s and Crichton’s houses and drop off a bullet? Maybe.

  Louis arrived at the car at the same time as she did.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. How was your coffee?”

  She didn’t hear his reply. No cigarette break could cover the fifteen-mile drive to Killearn, kill Tom Hughes, and drive back again.

  “Hullo?” Louis said. “I really have got you on a bad day.”

  “I’m sorry, Louis.” Then she spoke her thoughts out loud, knowing that the policeman in Louis would at least realise that she was calculating something even if he couldn’t know exactly what. “The one time they all alibied each other was for the night of Hughes’s murder.”

  “Go on.” Louis opened up the car for them.

  “I think some people in the Canal – that’s the local bar – said they saw them. But that could be easily arranged.”

  Louis manoeuvred out of the car park and into the street, allowing her space to think.

  As they passed Glasgow Cathedral she saw Coulter and Russell, with Kenny Boyd between them being marched through cars parked off-road. Maddy sat bolt upright. Louis stopped the car.

  “Go on.”

  She hesitated a second, leaned over and pecked his cheek, and got out. “Thank you.”

  When she got to them Kenny was opening the boot of an old Renault Clio. All three men glanced at her as she approached but, whatever was happening here, it was more pressing than her presence. Even to DS John Russell. Kenny was trying to find his keys, going through his pockets, his hands shaking.

  “Do we really have to do this now? My boy’s going under the knife for Christ’s sake!”

  “Just open the boot, Mr Boyd,” Coulter said.

  “It’s no’ like I’m going anywhere! I’ve told you they’re here. Youse could wait a bit.”

  “No, we really can’t.”

  Kenny found his keys, opened the boot, which was strewn with his working materials – overalls, tool case, paint-brushes, rags. He pushed it all aside and unhooked the lid of the spare wheel winch compartment. Nestled snugly in there, the spare wheel below removed, was a black dark plastic box. Kenny grabbed the handle.

  “Hang on,” Russell said. He took out his mobile and filmed the proceedings. “Okay.”

  When the case had been lifted out, Coulter told Kenny to stand aside. Russell made sure he was still within camera shot. The inspector took latex gloves from his pocket.

  “I was only trying to make a wee bit money on the side. Dae’in a favour for Joe. I needed the dosh. Wi’ having to be at the hospital so often I wasn’t working as much…” Nobody was listening to him. All eyes were on the box. Gloved up, Coulter figured out the system of clips and latches. “Is it locked?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t give me a key. I’m only haudin’ on to them.”

  DS Dalgarno arrived from the hospital as Coulter opened the unlocked box – inside was a tray, with the empty cavities in the shape of three Glock 19s.

  “Where are they, Kenny? Where are the guns?”

  Kenny Boyd stared dumbfounded at the case. “I … they were there when he gave them to me. I think. He said… I don’t know!”

  Russell got on his radio, still filming with his left hand. “We need officers here now! Cathedral Square.”

  Dalgarno put her hand on Boyd’s shoulder. “Kenneth Boyd I’m arresting you for possession of prohibited weapons—”

  “Not now! Jason. I’ve got to be here. For my son.”

  Coulter was staring at the box of guns. There were only three after all. One for Miller, one for Hughes, and one left outside Crichton’s house. He was looking straight down on the case; Maddy a step behind him could see the side of it, deeper than it looked, lodged into the winch compartment. She reached over, and lifted the tray out. Underneath was another identical tray.

  “Please. Take me back to Jason. For the love of God. I’ve no’ done nothing.”

  Coulter’s and Maddy’s eyes met. The case had contained six guns, as they had expected. But in the second tray, only two were left. One unaccounted for.

  Louis had parked illegally, engine still running, on Castle Street.

  “Oh sweet Jesus.” Kenny had understood at the same moment as Maddy. “Oh Morag,” he stared at the missing guns. “What have you done?!”

  “Maddy. Where you going?” Coulter called after her as she walked towards Louis and the car. She didn’t turn round and she didn’t answer. Where was the missing gun? Getting in the car she said to Louis: “The High Court. Straight on. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

  As he joined the traffic, Coulter was running after her. “Come back!”

  “Wind down the window,” she said to Louis. When he did, she called out: “If I find her, bring Kenny!”

  Coulter threw his hands up in the air and she could see the expletive on his lips, floating off into the traffic.

  Louis slid the window closed again. “Wherever it is you’re going – I gather you shouldn’t be?”

  She didn’t answer, but Louis drove as fast as he could anyway, almost jumping a red light at Duke Street.

  “You’ve got your killer, yes?” Louis was trying to work it out. “And something could happen now?” Maddy nodded.

  “Why not let the police deal with it Maddy? Coulter knows what he’s doing.”

  “There’ll be sirens, guns, flashing lights, uniforms … she needs someone she can speak to.”

  Louis sighed and nodded and kept jockeying through the lunchtime traffic. Coming up to the Trongate he just missed a light at London Road. He had no choice but to stop. Maddy waited for a moment, then opened the door.

  “The High Court. I’ll be quicker running.” She closed the door before he could answer, and although a hundred conflicting thoughts ran through her head as she sprinted off down Saltmarket there was enough space to realise that this would most certainly go down as Louis Casci’s worst holiday ever.

  She was correctly attired after all. Trainers, trackies, light shirt, small shoulder bag she howked across one shoulder. Cars blew their horns as she dodged between them. On a day as warm as you could expect of a Glasgow spring she must look like some spontaneous jogger; as if she’d been in her house and had looked at herself and thought, If I don’t run right now I’ll get even fatter.

  She silenced that part of her mind that told her this was a pointless mission, a stupid one, maybe even a dangerous one. She had no idea where exactly to look for Morag and/or Nairne, or what she would do if she found either of them. She just kept moving, heading towards the river – an almost convincing blue under the crisp February sun. Running, it seemed, was easier when it wasn’t the reason in itself but a means to an end; she didn’t notice the strain, only the need to get to her destination quickly.

  Coulter wasn’t of a mind to do Maddy’s bidding. Right now he was more exasperated than even Russell could be over the crazy fiscal. Except she was right. Or might be. Boyd was leaning against the car, head in his hands, weeping. He didn’t look like a man who had killed anyone; he did look like a man who had realised for the first time that his wife might have. Somewhere in the distance they heard the first siren.

  “Any news on Nairne?” he asked Dalgarno.

  She shook her head. “Left Edinburgh early this morning. He has a hearing in the High Court but not till this afternoon.”

  “And Morag Boyd?” They had already put a description out for all cars and beat officers. Late thirties; mid-length dark hair; ap
prox. 150 pounds; heavy army-green anorak with hood; black skirt, tights and shoes. Russell checked his phone and radio, and shook his head. Coulter thought for a moment, then took Kenny Boyd by the arm.

  “Come with me.”

  “You’re not doing as she said?” Russell was aghast. “The response cars will be here any minute.”

  Coulter marched Boyd back to the hospital where he’d left his own car.

  “I can’t back you up on this one, Alan,” Russell shouted. On this one? Coulter wondered again if his sergeant was far closer to, and more in tune with, their superior officers than he was.

  The only destination Maddy could think of was the little room that Forbes Nairne had more or less made his own. Would Morag know that? Unlikely. But she must link him in her mind with the High Court, so where else would she go? Maddy slowed down as she approached the Doric entrance – running would only attract attention. Again her garb turned out useful – she looked like a witness, or a relation. The policeman inside noticed her, but let her pass without comment. Possibly because he recognised her. That mad bat of a fiscal.

  Heading through the parts of the building open to the public she made her way to the new wing at the back and up to the restaurant area. She tried to think like Morag might. Looking left and right, scouring the place. The one or two rooms that were designed for meetings between hearings were down a corridor to her left. The one at the end was the one Nairne used.

  There was no one in there. But a jacket was draped over the back of the chair she’d seen Nairne sit in before. And, just as she was closing the door, she saw a glove, a single, light, disposable gardening glove, lying on the floor.

  Rushing back up the corridor, trying desperately to figure out where to go next, she passed the gents and just as she did she heard a voice inside.

  Coulter hadn’t wanted to use his portable siren but he was getting hopelessly snarled up on High Street. He kept Boyd in his peripheral vision and the car doors locked – but if the man decided he was bailing there’d be little Coulter could do. When the radio had told them that a woman corresponding to the description issued had been sighted walking past the Briggait, Boyd’s head had slumped. Maddy’s hunch might prove to be right. Then again, that description could apply to thousands of women in the city centre right now.