Father Confessor (J McNee series)

by Russel D. McLean

  “And then?”

  He smiled. Patiently.

  I shook my head. “Not interested. Not for you.”

  “I have a name.”

  I stood up, grabbing at the desk for leverage. My body was still shaking. The codeine had dulled the pain a little, but not enough that I could function as normal. It took a lot of effort to remain on my feet. I could hear a noise like the sea heard through a shell.

  I made for the door, each step slow and deliberate.

  Burns didn’t move. Didn’t try and stop me. He wasn’t going to strong-arm me. He wanted to prove the point to me. Let me know that he wasn’t just a criminal. He would let me walk. But not without dangling some other bait.

  As I put my hand on the doorhandle, he said, “Kevin Wood.”

  I turned. “What?”

  “Just a name,” he said. “But I can see you’ve made up your mind.”

  I nodded. The name sounded familiar, but my head was fogged and all I wanted to do was crawl into a dark space and go to sleep.

  I could have stayed. Listened to what he had to say.

  Instead I thought, sodit, and opened the door.

  Burns said nothing.

  Just let me walk.

  SIXTEEN

  There was a taxi waiting for me outside. I couldn’t have told you where we were, just an anonymous looking warehouse on the edge of a residential street I’d never seen or at least didn’t recognise in the dark. The driver of the taxi was quiet, seemed to know where I wanted to head. Likely he’d been warned in advance. I checked my phone as we drove, saw a message from Susan.

  Another follow-up an hour later. Both asking where I was.

  I did the maths on how long I’d been out. Wondered how it must have looked, what Susan was thinking after seeing the way I left the ward back at Ninewells.

  Light was beginning to lick the sky as we pulled up outside my building. I offered the driver cash, but he said it was all taken care of.

  When I got into the apartment, I found Susan sitting in the living room, the lights off.

  She said, “Where were you?” sounding accusatory.

  Then she saw the state I was in.

  “Jesus, Steed!”

  ###

  I sipped at the coffee. My mouth hurt. There was the taste of blood. Thick. A gag reflex when I realised what the sensation was.

  The coffee burned hotter than expected, maybe an exposed nerve somewhere in one of my back teeth. I tried not let it show. More than likely, I failed.

  Susan sat across from me. “I thought you were past this.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Crap it’s nothing.” She looked guilty, then, her eyes suddenly breaking contact. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “What, you got upset, so you went looking for a fight?”

  I shook my head.

  “Steed, I know you. I remember what you were like after…”

  “… After Elaine died. You can say it, Susan.” But could she? Elaine’s death was over three years ago, now, and still it came between us. Perhaps because of what happened all those years ago. One moment where Susan and I had reached to each other for comfort, wound up pushing each other further away.

  That… mistake… still hung in the air, even though we both knew it was nothing to be ashamed of anymore. Still, both of us pretended it hadn’t happened. Did that say something we couldn’t express?

  Being an investigator, much of your job is figuring out other people’s motivations, seeing who they are and figuring why they do what they do. The thing you realise fast is that the most difficult people to figure out are those closest to you.

  And yourself?

  Forget it.

  Susan faltered as she tried to continue speaking. She started to twist the skin on her left index finger as though she were playing with a ring. But she didn’t wear much jewellery and certainly not on that finger. “After Elaine died… Steed, you were a mess. You were out there looking to die. You know that, don’t you?”

  The inside of my head felt thick, as though my brain was wrapped in a damp cloth. I put down the coffee, reached up to massage my temples.

  Susan said, “I wanted to reach out to you. I didn’t know how. Every time I tried, you were wrapped up in your grief and anger. You let them define you.”

  I wanted to stand up. Walk out.

  But I didn’t. Because she needed to say this. And I needed to hear it, too.

  “Two years ago,” Susan said, “I saw you like this. Your hand busted up. Your face split open. Jesus, someone had tried to shoot you, and you acted almost like you wished they’d succeeded.”

  I looked up. “Things are different now.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m backing off. This is too big for me.”

  She said, “I’ve heard that before.” But then she stood up, came over and put her arms around my shoulders, kissed the top of my head. The fleeting pressure of her lips on my scalp made me think of the sweep of a gentle breeze passing across me on a summer afternoon.

  ###

  Later, in bed, Susan lay with her head on my chest. I stroked her hair. Said, “This is going to be a strange question. But did your dad know Kevin Wood?”

  The name had been bubbling in my head for a while. Earlier, when Burns had tossed it at me, I had barely registered what he was saying.

  Now, later, my mind calm, the pain a low background buzz, I realised why I knew the name.

  Kevin Wood.

  Deputy Chief Constable Kevin Wood

  Second-top cop in Tayside. The man tipped for the top spot when the current boss left.

  When she heard his name, Susan gave a little laugh. “I guess… he was… Dad’s… I guess you’d say Wood was his nemesis.” She laughed the word off, as though it was ridiculous. As though in real life, no-one would dare use that word. Certainly, it had a melodramatic quality I was sure she didn’t intend.

  “There was bad blood?”

  “He came up at the same time as Dad. Look, you know how you are with George Lindsay? Guess that was my dad and Kevin Wood. Serious hatred there. But with Wood, Christ he was a sleazeball. I met him a few times. Gave me the shivers just to shake his hand, you know?” She sat up, leaned on one elbow to look down at me.

  I said, “I never met him. But from what I heard he was the Marmite of police officers.”

  “Don’t know about Marmite. Even Lindsay used to call him…” She hesitated. Directly quoting her superior wasn’t something she did with ease. Susan had no problems with swearing, but had never felt comfortable using the words herself. Except in those rare moments when her guard was down, when the pressure was on. Took a burst of willpower for her to get it out: “A power-grabbing cuntybaws.”

  “Makes what he calls me sound complimentary.”

  “Where’d you hear his name? I mean, Wood…”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She nodded. Tried to look relaxed, like everything was normal. But her body was tense, the doubt running through her in waves.

  She was afraid. I didn’t know if it was for me.

  “Things are different,” she said. “Things have changed.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They have.”

  ###

  I woke early evening. Body clock screwed.

  Susan was gone.

  No note.

  I went through to the shower, blasted the heat high and stood under water hot enough to scald. Twice I had to lean against the tiles to stop from toppling over. All I’d been through, I was nearly knocked out by a jet of warm water.

  When I was done, I looked at myself in the mirror.

  The man who stared back looked tired.

  Like he couldn’t take the pace any more.

  How long could you keep punishing yourself before you dropped?

  SEVENTEEN

  There was no-one in the ward from the force. They’d done their bit. Probably knew that Lindsay would get pissed off if they hung about too long, would want them back a
t the job.

  A nurse allowed me into the small room where Lindsay was hooked up to a machine that controlled his breathing. Induced coma.

  Jesus.

  I pulled up a chair. “Christ, so it’s come to this, has it? You’re my confidant. And only because you’re in a coma and can’t talk back? So consider this reason enough to get better. Because if you don’t come round, I’ll keep coming back to whine at you. Like the bawbag you keep saying I am.”

  There was no response, of course.

  I kept talking: “I promised Susan I’d leave this alone. Same promise I make all the time. Aye, the same one I keep breaking. But I don’t know if she understands why I can’t walk away. Or maybe she does. Either way, I think she just wants to lay her dad to rest without dragging up any more ugliness. It would be easier. To brush all of this under the carpet.”

  I turned back to look at Lindsay. His chest moved up and down. The machine gurgled.

  But he didn’t move.

  As though he was a simulacrum of the man I’d known; a fake, a stand-in.

  I didn’t know quite what to feel. The old animosity I’d come to rely on when dealing with Lindsay seemed petty.

  I found myself thinking about how he’d react if he knew what I was thinking. He’d be telling me what a screw-up I was. How I wasn’t able to leave things alone. How I should just leave this to the bastarding professionals. The poor pricks like him who were paid to deal with all this shite and do it right.

  He’d have a point, of course.

  I’d done all I could. I needed to take what I had to the proper authorities. To Discipline and Complaints. But I was hesitant to do that, a little voice at the back of my brain asking,

  What do I have?

  A name.

  A rumour.

  Sure, I had evidence on the three corrupt constables. But given Lindsay had already got information on them from D&C, my stepping forward would hardly be revelatory. And if anyone asked me about Cal Anderson, I couldn’t really say what had happened to him. If he turned up dead, I’d just be putting myself in the shite. I knew the truth about what had happened to Cal Anderson. Because, for all his talk, Burns was a man of swift, brutal and decisive action.

  I wondered how long Anderson would be kept alive.

  Whatever happened to Anderson, I was certain Burns wouldn’t be present. Deniability was his watchword. The old bastard had become careful in his old age. Aside from whispering a few words in the right ears, he made sure to keep himself away from the scenes of the crime. That was why no-one had been able to touch him.

  It doesn’t matter, you pansy wee prick.

  I looked at Lindsay. His eyes were still closed. He hadn’t moved. I’d just imagined what he would say. From this angle he looked small. Weak and insubstantial. His arms were pipe cleaners, his frame thinner than I recalled.

  I heard a sound from the door. Turned and saw a woman there. Tall, with long mousy hair that fell in waves down her back. Dressed in blue jeans and a black polo-neck. Her eyes were large, making her look years younger than she was.

  She said, “Who are you?”

  “You’re Mrs Lindsay?”

  She nodded.

  “I used to work with your husband.”

  She came into the room. “He’ll recover. That’s what they’re saying, anyway. Doctors never give you absolutes. So I’m taking that as a good sign.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “You’re CID? You look in pretty bad shape for a detective.”

  “I’ve had a bad day,” I said. “And I’m not CID. I was. Once.” I wondered, what did Lindsay tell his family about his working life? Did he tell them about the work he did? What he thought of his fellow officers? How much did his wife know about what he’d been working on before he was attacked?

  I gave her my name.

  Her eyebrows raised and she shook my hand. “Don’t take this wrong, but you’re the last person I would have expected to see.”

  “We had our disagreements,” I said.

  She smiled. “I often thought he had more respect for you than he admitted. He put so much time and energy into complaining about you.”

  “I never knew what I did to annoy him.”

  “I’m not sure he did either. He’s funny that way, always has been.”

  She took the chair I had been sitting in. Reached out and took her husband’s hand. Her grip was gentle, more a caress than anything else.

  “I always understood,” she said, “that he could be one person on the job and another at home. He feels a responsibility, I guess.” She smiled, and I wished I could see the memories replaying in her head. “He was the same when we met…”

  “Where did you – ?”

  “University,” she said. “My first year. He was shy, you know.”

  I nodded.

  “I know he’s all bluster at work,” she said. “I’ve heard the way some of you speak about him. But he has to do that, you know, to be heard.” She was trying to smile again, but it wasn’t working. The tears were breaking through. “He’s a sweetheart. You should see him with our son. I couldn’t… I didn’t want to bring Alan here. I don’t know that… he’s just turned seven, you know? He knows that Daddy’s sick. He hopes he gets better. But I don’t want him to…” She took a deep breath. “No-one will tell me why this happened.”

  “No-one knows,” I said.

  “I want to know.”

  “There are people working on it.” Meaning the police, the proper authorities.

  She said, “You?”

  I said, “Yes,” without even hesitating.

  Realised once the word was out there that I couldn’t go back on it.

  That I didn’t want to.

  EIGHTEEN

  We took a coffee in the reception. Standard vending machine fare; sour and unpleasant. Taste didn’t matter, really. Holding the drinks gave us something to do.

  “Did you ever meet a colleague of your husband’s; a man named Kevin Wood?”

  She laughed. At least I think it was a laugh. A sad little sound, halfway to a cry. “You mean the Deputy Chief Constable for Tayside?”

  “Aye, that’ll be the one.”

  “You know how much you annoyed George?”

  “Probably the understatement of the year.”

  She shrugged, as though saying I didn’t know what I was talking about. “Well, you were an annoyance, a pain in the arse… but he hated Kevin Wood. I mean seriously.” She licked at her lips as though they were suddenly drying up. “You know they joined the force in the same year? Only difference was, Kevin liked to play politics. And maybe more.”

  “Corrupt?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. George never came out and said it, but then he didn’t like to make baseless accusations.” She smiled. “Maybe that sounds strange to you.”

  I thought of the insults he’d thrown my way down the years. Wondered if I could really deny any of them. He used to make me angry, spitting mad. But the truth will do that to you.

  I said, “What about Ernie Bright?”

  Her forehead creased. She said, “You know how upset George was when he heard about that man’s death? I don’t know that I’ve seen him take anything so hard.”

  When I was on the force, I remembered that at best Lindsay and Ernie Bright had maintained a professional relationship. But the tension between them had always been clear to those who cared to notice.

  Ernie had once called it a “clash of personalities”, and I think maybe he meant that sincerely. But you didn’t have to like someone as a person to respect them as an officer. The world is more complex than that.

  “I don’t remember anything about the two of them.” She shook her head. “After a while, if I’m honest, I forgot the details of what George used to say. Sometimes you just need someone to rant to. Not to remember everything you say to them.” She looked at me strangely. “Are you married?”

  I shook my head. “I was engaged.”

  She raised he
r free hand to her mouth. Gesture of shock. Eyes wide. “Oh God, I’m sorry. He told me and… you know he did everything he could to…?”

  I didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to be reminded. Mrs Lindsay lowered her hand. “When he told me, I wanted to… I don’t know, I didn’t know you and I felt so sorry for you.”

  When Elaine died, the worst part had been the sympathy. Words that became a blur of abstract sentiment. People going through motions because they didn’t know what else to do. That somehow hurt more than the memory, the fact that people were walking on eggshells around me, uncertain what to say, as though the slightest thing might set me off.

  They meant well, of course.

  Like Mrs Lindsay. She said she felt sorry for me. She didn’t know me. Only knew what her husband had told her. And what did he tell her? Did I even want to know?

  I said, “It’s in the past.”

  “He never told you what he found out. He said he didn’t know –”

  “He found nothing,” I said, maybe a little too quickly.

  Mrs Lindsay nodded, and her eyes darted to the coffee in her hand.

  I said, “He thought Wood was on the take, then?”

  “He said a lot of things,” Mrs Lindsay said. “I don’t recall specifics and I don’t want to start saying things I don’t know are true.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Forgive me.”

  “You look like you’ve been through tough times, too.”

  I stood up. Slow. Trembling a little. If she noticed, Lindsay’s wife didn’t mention it. Instead, she said, “When he wakes up, ask him about your fiancée. About what he found.”

  I said nothing.

  Walked away.

  ###

  In the car, I let my head batter back against the seat rest. I took deep breaths in and out.

  The snow that had begun falling lightly the night before was back and was now falling harder. Heavier. The temperature in the city had dropped. Below freezing. It was colder in the car than outside.

  I turned the key. Blasted the heaters. Closed my eyes. I wanted to go to sleep. My breathing was unsteady, rhythms shot to hell. Every rise and fall of my chest was heavy.

  I could have slept.