Potter's Field

by Dolan, Chris;

  “I’m sorry, ma’m but there is no answer from that department.”

  “I don’t think you understand. This is an official demand from the Scottish Courts…”

  “I understand perfectly. I will forward your message to Commander Casci.”

  At least the woman seemed to know who Louis was. “I’m sure the Commander will contact you just as soon as he is able.”

  She sounded black. Maddy imagined her sitting in one of those dusty, old-fashioned offices, NY’s morning light shining dustily in through slats in blinds.

  “We’ve had reports of a murder related to an investigation here. Can you tell me if Commander Casci is assigned to that case?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot divulge that information.”

  A conspiracy theorist would say the woman was stonewalling, but Maddy recognised institutional jargon for one department not having a clue what another was doing. She thanked the woman and hung up. She sent Louis an email: “You’ve disappeared into thin air, Commander.”

  Belinda wasn’t at the flat when she got home at seven o’clock. Maddy sat down on the couch for a moment and promptly fell asleep. She’d been doing that all week. Not going to bed till late, sleeping restlessly and getting up early, rushing around all day, juggling the Kelvingrove and Bearsden cases with the rest of her work. Full of drive and purpose, she felt she’d never need to sleep again. But in the evenings, her energy suddenly failed her. She’d meant to pass by the hospital tonight, but couldn’t face it. She’d taken a taxi home and within five minutes was dead to the world. Except the world crept into her dreams. Holes in the ground, overlooked by a gunman in a tree, shamans chanting… It was the chanting that woke her: they were intoning, call and response like it was a Gaelic psalm, “Torna a Sorrento” – one of Nonno’s favourite songs. That was too weird.

  Was Lennon the true culprit? Even if he wasn’t, what business was that of hers? All she had to do was compile a case. But if the case was flawed, how could she do her job properly? Why did Whyte contact her, and had she understood him correctly? If Nonno dies, how would Mama cope? How would she cope? She heard something in the room and tugged her eyes open. Belinda was taking off her jacket.

  “How did the arrangements go?”

  “All set up,” Belinda said, as if she had organised a birthday party, not the burial of her only child.

  “You got a hold of Mike Jamieson?”

  “Yup. He was very kind.” Belinda went to the door, presumably to prepare another healthy vegetarian diner. “You should do some exercise in the evenings, Maddy. Jogging.”

  “Don’t mention jogging.”

  “Go to the baths. Swim a few lengths. I’ve missed two visits this week and I can feel it already.”

  “I hate swimming pools. I get this feeling all the men are mentally dressing me.”

  Belinda laughed and went off to the kitchen. Maddy looked at the copse of trees outside her window. She wondered if they were the last of the original Caledonian forest, a scrap that had somehow escaped centuries of planners, builders, road-layers. An ancient ghost of woodland in the midst of the rational city. With a groan she hauled herself over to the computer, plugged in Elaine’s memory stick.

  If you were gong to hide a file you wouldn’t put it in the obvious place. Maddy went back to the documents menu. Finance? She opened the folder. About twenty files with boring names like MH2exps. Belinda came back in as she opened file after file, closing them again when she saw a list of figures. They knew how to charge expenses, Sign-Chronicity.

  “By the way,” Maddy suddenly remembered, “Did Paul have any connections with Drumchapel?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about his time here. Why he came to Glasgow, instead of to me.” If she was hurt, she didn’t show it. “Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Maddy said, opening a file labeled ScotEx6. Ex for exhibition? Probably more expenses. But computer gobbledygook came up on her screen. Must need a programme Maddy’s laptop didn’t have. All the rest of the files were Word or PDFs. This was the exception.

  “Belinda,” she called through to the kitchen, “couldn’t put on some coffee, could you?”

  “I’m making risotto.”

  “I’m not hungry yet. Coffee?”

  Maddy could feel Belinda’s disapproval wafting into the living room, but she interpreted her silence as capitulation. She switched on her desktop again and transferred the ScotEx6 file onto CD. Wonder of wonders – she was becoming a Master of Technology, it worked. The desktop had more programmes on it. She hadn’t a clue what they did but hoped one of them could open the file. The screen told her she had a new email. Louis.

  “Exuse dleay.”

  Casci was one of these emailers who thought spelling and grammar had no business in hyperspace.

  “been busy. you there now? at your compter. Not got messnger have you?”

  Messenger? Yes, there was an icon at the foot of her screen. Between the spelling and the jargon, it took some time for her to follow Louis’s instructions, but eventually she got the thing working. Maddy had taught Louis predictive texting, and now he had taught her messaging. That must signify something. Belinda brought through the coffee while she tapped on the keyboard, then went back to her risotto-making.

  She was surprised at the time. Must have slept longer than she’d realised.

  <4 30. at home. Taking some time to myself.>

  While she waited for his response she flew into the kitchen, past Belinda, and grabbed the bottle of red opened from last night. This called for celebration – coffee and wine.

 

  She assumed he meant “things”. She was aware of being girlishly pleased at being back in contact with Louis, and thought she’d better sound grown-up and professional for a bit.

  < Victims name is Jordan Murdock.>

 

 

  Between messages and alternate sips of wine and coffee she got the whole story – or the part of it he was willing to divulge. They had managed to identify the kid quickly, and locate his family, so Jordan Murdock evaded the indignity of the cemetery for unknown paupers and vagrants. And he wasn’t Haitian-American. But he was black, and he had been summarily executed for apparently no reason.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  < Jordan attended the same sports club as a nephew of Ti-Guy Plissard. One of the few places Derrick Braithewaite form Barbados was reprted to have been seen bfore being killed.>

  She could imagine Louis going off doing his own thing. Staking out the sports club. Sitting in a car up a sidestreet with a partner and a coffee and a box of doughnuts. Or undercover, maybe, pretending to be the dad of an eager young baseball player. Maybe she’d been watching too many American cop shows.

 

 

  He signed off with a few X’s. In vision? A camera thingy and a microphone had come with the computer when she’d bought it. She’d decluttered them last week. In a box in the hall cupboard. And tomorrow night Belinda would be safely back in Dundee. She went to look, found the webcam and a million wires and, in a box next to it, both bound for the Oxfam shop, there were a couple of old tops. A strapped black number she’d thought sh
e’d have no occasion to use again. But maybe for her screen debut tomorrow night…? Make that Mistress of Technology.

  Coulter took his frustration out on everyone around him. He yelled at Patterson Webb to get on the hunt for Martin Whyte. He didn’t bother explaining why. He told himself, rampaging back and forth between his office and the incident room, bumping elbows with innocent passers-by and not apologising, that it was because he was too angry with Maddy. But what was he really angry about – that she had been in trouble, in danger, attacked in the street, and she hadn’t gone to him, or because she had vital information about a suspect, Whyte, and hadn’t told him? He yelled out for Amy Dalgarno from behind his desk.

  “Hotels. B&B’s. If Whyte really is in town and not at home, he must be staying somewhere!”

  “All the establishments in Glasgow? I’ll start with city centre.”

  “No. West End.”

  “Why West End?”

  “Just do it Amy!”

  Amy went off obediently, but he caught the look in her eye. She’d bide her time, then give him hell.

  “Find out if Whyte’s got relatives.” DS Russell was next in line for barked orders. “Friends. Clients. Anything. Anyone!”

  “I thought you wanted us to concentrate on finding Lennon?” The DS had been waiting his chance. He was being proven right – Coulter had jumped too fast at the Lennon theory.

  “Free up some people, and some time, John,” Coulter softened his tone. “We have to find them both.”

  “Can I ask why – why your sudden renewed interest in Martin Whyte?”

  Coulter would have to tell him. Soon. He rubbed his eyes and rolled his shoulders, trying to relax. Maddy had been accosted, and she hadn’t reported it. She had a witness staying at her domicile. Russell could sink the two of them, Principal Depute PF Maddalena Shannon and Detective Inspector Alan Coulter. At the very least put the first hole in both their ships.

  She’d eaten half a plateful of Belinda’s risotto, trying to make distracted conversation in the kitchen, then ran out to her computer again on the trail of ExScot6, leaving the washing up to a woman who was burying a son tomorrow.

  She got to a dialogue box that asked her which programme she wanted to open the mystery file with. About twelve possibilities. She was on her tenth, waiting for something called “Real Player” to kick in. Waiting, she looked out into the dark. The trees were scarier when you couldn’t see them. The darkness pressed up against her window like a black curtain. She could hear Belinda go into the spare room. Did the horror of it all get to her in the night, when she was alone? What was she doing in there – praying, maybe. Or crying to herself, public defences down.

  ScotEx6 still wouldn’t open. She checked in “Properties”. The file seemed to be a download… There was the name of a website. She Googled in ScotEx6. Scottish Philatelic association – Elaine and Jim stamp collectors? Nah. There was a Spanish ScotEx that sold toilet paper, and a site dedicated to a pet dog called Scotex, in Brazil of all places. Two pages down, she found Scottish Exhibitionists.

  Unbelievable. Men and women parading naked or scantily clad on the net. Fifty-year-old housewives from Perth in Anne Summers leather and lace. Twenty-two-year-old students at Glasgow Caledonian letting it all hang out – or, worse, in Speedos. Couples in Angus doing things to each other. At Craigneuk, she burst out laughing – a burly hirsute middle-aged lorry driver pictured in his wife’s tiny scanties. He looked ridiculous, but happy, harmless. They didn’t seem to be out to meet each other, these people. The point of the site, as far as she could tell, was purely voyeuristic/exhibitionist.

  Who was she to laugh – chubby thirties single who had just looked out a sexy top for a webcam adventure tomorrow with a near-stranger on another continent. That was different from posting dodgy photos of yourself on the World Wide Net, wasn’t it?

  They’re doing no harm, these folk – so long as their hobby doesn’t fall into the hands of the young or the weak-stomached. Some folks like to show off their bums, and others, apparently, liked to look, regardless of the state or size of the bum or other body parts in question.

  Surely this couldn’t be what Whyte was referring to. If he – or Jim or Elaine or, heaven forbid, a mix of the three of them – was in here, it could take forever to find them. There were pages and pages of the stuff. On average, ten new contributions a day, from women photographed, they said, by their “hubbies”, men by their wives, and couples, presumably with time-delay digicams. Each file was back catalogued for years. There must be thousands of pages.

  She’d try a few, see what she came up with. A fairly presentable couple from Edinburgh liked to snap each other showing their pants in public places. Lay-bys, parks, the beach at Dunbar, presumably early in the morning, public flashers – the cereal row in Sainsbury’s would never look the same to Maddy again. A youngish man – thirties – from Aberdeen was actually rather presentable. She lingered on him for a moment. Quite a lot of him to linger on. No wonder he likes getting his photie taken. She went back to the main menu. What was she supposed to be looking for? An association with Whyte or the Docherties. She scrolled down the file-names hoping something would catch her eye. Bert and Sal from Berwick. Ginny in Adrossan. “Strongdong” Broughty Ferry. “Silky Mum” and Rod ’n’ Rita from Perthshire. Scotland was a small country and there were hundreds of these people – sooner or later she’d come across someone she knew. Good grief. Who? Manda? Uncle Gerry? Maxwell Binnie?! They were taking quite a risk, these jolly virtual swingers. Alan and Martha Coulter? Maybe they were having a better time of it than she imagined. And sharing the joy. Serene Izzie? Dan McKillop? Who knows what happens when the bedroom door’s closed. Well we all do now, on ScotEx.

  There’s nothing like a triple tragedy for the politicos and flesh-pressers and grandstanders to get their public rocks off. Even the likes of Binnie and quango convener John MacDougall were nudged aside by bigger and slicker egos and operators. The First Minister himself, half the Scottish Executive in his trail, a smattering of celebrities – one-time footballers and half-baked pop stars. Moderators and bishops and judges and army chaps with medals. Monsignor Connolly in his black-and-magenta; Chief Constable Robertson in his navy blue-and-silver. Lined up in Glasgow City Chambers. The Scottish Establishment on parade in all its matt-finish radiance. And in the Cathedral itself. Maddy worked her way over to a side aisle.

  One by one the great and the good told us sombrely about children. The wonder and beauty of them – and the terrible problem of them. It must have been the most excruciating ordeal for the families. The Mullhollands had buried little Frances yesterday. Anne Kennedy had had the longest to get used to the horror, the only one to weep openly. Bird-like Tony looked like he’d been chased by a cat – a fresh cut under his left eye and a bruise on the other cheek didn’t help matters. Maddy saw Coulter and Russell clock it and whisper. Darren Mulholland, as if he hadn’t had enough of funerals, was there, at the back, half out the door. He glanced surreptitiously at Maddy. Perhaps seeing other young people’s graves made his sister’s feel less lonely.

  It was the first time Maddy had seen Des and Veronica Kane. She’d interview them while they were up here. They glared at everyone around them, probably wondering how in heaven’s name the boy they’d cultivated so carefully ended up dead amongst this crowd. The natural mum, Belinda, sat straight and tall, as serene and dignified as ever.

  After an hour of torture, the congregation filed out, each to their own family funeral, office, or television interview. Maddy nodded to Belinda, letting her know she’d attend Paul’s burial too. Binnie made sure he passed coincidentally by. “My office. Minute you get in.”

  Tony, following his ex-wife out, was stopped by DS Russell. “Cut yourself shaving your eyebrows, Tone?” Bit much, Maddy thought, noising a man up on the day of his murdered son’s funeral. He’s a plastic bag caught on a tree, at the mercy of the four winds, blown around by any will stronger than his own.

  She watched
Belinda Laird and Father Mike shake hands. He cocked his head, listening with false intensity, nodding sympathetically. Maddy smiled – the trendy priest had finally met someone who was even surer of everything and smugger than himself. Belinda introduced him to Des and Veronica who, from this distance, seemed less enamoured by him.

  Coulter and Russell loomed up on her like muggers. “Maddy. There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.” Standing behind them was a short, red-haired woman with big glasses. Maddy couldn’t even figure out where they’d produced her from – there had been no woman with them a moment ago. Coulter nodded to the door, and the four of them trooped back inside the grand, emptied cathedral.

  Maddy’s thoughts weren’t on the mysterious redhead however as she followed them into a disappointingly plain room after the drama of paint and plaster and pillars of the nave and altar and reredos, but that Elaine Docherty still hadn’t denounced her to the police. They would have talked to her about Whyte, and she hadn’t mentioned Maddy’s visit and the disappearance of her memory gadget. Maddy was onto something. If she had any sense, though, she’d hand the purloined device over to Coulter. First chance she got. Definitely.

  “Miss Shannon. Aine Corrigan,” Coulter was at his most formal.

  Now that they had sat down around a small table, Maddy saw that there was a force about this woman. The ordinariness she had had outside she seemed to be able to take off like a coat. She had a subtly attractive face. At first glance unremarkable, but look closer and the jaw was delicately chiselled, cheekbones high under delicately fair skin. The light amber of her eyes was made all the brighter by her small glasses; her pupils were dilated, taking everything in.

  “Mrs. Corrigan has been working with the police in Dublin for some time.” Coulter tilted his head in a way that told Maddy that that’s all she’d ever find out about Aine Corrigan. “She has had dealings with the accused. As you are precognosing the case against Mr. Lennon, it’s proper that you hear what Mrs Corrigan has to say.” Coulter sat back and deferrred humbly to the red-haired woman, who turned her amber eyes on Maddy. “Ian Lennon was our finest ever sniper.” Maddy was used to talk of snipers in raucous Belfast accents; it sounded strange in Corrigan’s soft Dublin. The Dublin nuns at Maddy’s convent school were gentle angels.