“You didn’t sound good on the phone,” I said.
“I had no reason to sound good.”
“You’ve been holding back since our first consultation. There’s something else going on.”
“No. Nothing else.” I would have believed him except his eyes were focused on the plastic table top and his voice trembled despite his best efforts at composure.
“If you know something…”
“Last night I got a phone call.” He looked up at me again. Bloodshot eyes made him look like he’d drunk enough booze to re-float the Titanic. “A Cockney accent, you know, like that bloody EastEnders shite.” He sipped from his cup, winced. Then blew on the hot liquid to cool it down. “Asking about my brother.”
“You mean his suicide?”
“No. This… this bastard…told me my brother had stolen something.”
“Like what?”
“Like money. I don’t know how much,” Robertson said, and I thought he was a little too quick with that information. “He just said money. That was all. He said I knew where it was.”
“You don’t know what he was talking about?”
“The first time I saw my brother in over thirty years was when I found him hanging from a tree, Mr McNee.”
“This man on the phone, did he say anything else?”
“He said to wait and they’d be in touch.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Are you no listening, you stupid bloody eejit!”
I sat back. Folded my arms. Waited.
Finally: “It wasn’t what he said.”
I nodded. “You should go to the police.”
“You said. And tell them what? They’ve got their hands full looking into that woman’s murder. And they suspect me of that, as well. Calling the police isn’t going to do any good, McNee.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Your advert said you do security work. So I want your services on another job. Security.”
“Securing you?”
“Aye.”
“Like a bodyguard?”
“Aye. Like a bodyguard.” Talking slowly, as if I was a child.
I shook my head. “Mr Robertson, you’re right. You need protection. But you should go to the police. Hiring private security is all well and fine, but I still recommend that—”
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m no going to the police.”
I wanted back in. Even if it meant I would be stepping out of my depth.
At the very least, I had to make a gesture of hesitance. I owed Susan that, at least.
“Okay.” I pulled out my phone. “I’m going to give you some numbers. Professional security guys, people with experience in this—”
“I don’t want them on the job.”
“Sure, but I don’t have the experience that—”
He stood up. “I’m asking for your help,” he said, his voice loud enough that it attracted attention from the other diners. “Because I don’t trust anyone else to deal with this. I don’t know these people whose numbers you’ve got on your phone. And I definitely don’t trust the police any more than they’re going to trust what I tell them.” He stepped out from the booth. “Cash the bloody cheque, you parasitic bastard, before I cancel it.”
Maybe he expected me to follow him. But I stayed where I was, cupping my coffee between my hands and waiting until I heard him leave.
He was scared, and I couldn’t blame him for that. But his refusal to even think about approaching the police was what intrigued me. Any normal citizen with nothing to hide wouldn’t have thought twice about approaching the boys in blue, but Robertson had refused point blank. It wasn’t the phone call that had scared him. Something else was preying on his mind.
Chapter 17
They never caught the man who killed Elaine.
They didn’t even know if he was a man.
That’s the way the world is, sometimes. Resolutions are a long time coming, if they ever come at all. And sometimes you find yourself asking the universe, “why?”
I understood why Martin Barrow blamed me for his daughter’s death. In the moments before the accident, we’d been fighting. It had been a stupid fight and I wish she was still around so we could have more of them.
Elaine’s father, sitting in the back seat, had been on her side, probably wishing he could just punt me out the door.
If he had, maybe things would have worked out differently.
After the accident, they referred me to a psychiatrist.
At first it had been optional. Grief counselling. But I’d been stubborn and insisted that I was fine. That returning to work was the best way for me to deal with what had happened.
And then I’d broken a DI’s nose.
In part because I didn’t like the man.
But also because he told me what I already knew, and what I’d already dismissed: they couldn’t find the man in the other car.
The doctor who saw me was a tall man with curly hair and Michael Caine glasses. He was skeletally thin and wore cords in an attempt to be ironic. He spoke slowly, with the gentle lilt of Aberdeen hiding somewhere in his words.
“You felt good when you punched the DI?”
This was maybe our second or third session, and I guess he believed that by then we should have made some connection. I should have been comfortable talking to him. He was the kind of man people liked talking to.
Truth was, I thought he was an arrogant prick who’d never known the kind of agony you go through when you lose someone so senselessly. Learned everything in the classroom. Passed his exams with flying colours. Fooled them into thinking he had some kind of empathy with people.
He didn’t fool me.
In spite of that, I made an attempt to open up. “Anyone would feel good, breaking that fucker’s nose.”
“He’s not popular?”
“He’s not a people person.”
The doctor sat in a leather chair with a reclining back. He tucked his left leg up underneath him. Trying to look relaxed. But it was an act. Like everything else about him. If he was a good psychiatrist, he made me think they were all a bunch of con-artists.
“You would say you’re a people person?”
“No.”
He waited, as though expecting more of a response.
“So you broke his nose because you didn’t like him?”
“Why not?”
I kept my eyes fixed on the picture that was framed behind his desk. A black and white picture of the Tay Rail Bridge, shot from underneath. Gulls flitting about the struts. The image was at once majestic and imposing.
“Because he told you something you didn’t want to hear.”
“I know that’s what it looks like.” But he’d got something there, this soft talking man with the serious expression.
“But?”
“But… you don’t know this bastard. He hates me, always has done.”
“And yet he stepped forward to take charge of your case. He wanted to find this other driver…”
“And he didn’t.”
“You think he failed on purpose?”
“It’s possible.”
“But unlikely.”
He had me over a barrel. I never liked Lindsay and God knew he never liked me. But it didn’t make Lindsay a bad guy. Certainly didn’t make him the kind of man who’d fuck up an investigation simply for revenge. He was stupid. Petty.
But not malicious.
What I always wondered was why he stepped up to take charge of the inquiry in the first place.
The doctor shifted in his chair. Unfurled his leg. Sat forward. “Do you ever think that you’ve just been looking for someone to blame?”
“I know that he didn’t…”
“People have a basic need. For closure. For resolution. We don’t like things to remain unexplained. In your case, you need to find someone to hold responsible for your fiancée’s death. You have a need to see justice, or at least to gain some kind of
revenge. To look them in the eye and let them see what they did to you.”
“But I’ll never have that.”
“Aye, but it doesn’t stop you from trying to find a scapegoat, anyway, does it?”
I attended maybe seven or eight sessions before I finally walked out.
Of everything.
Chapter 18
The book was called Hard Boiled. There was a picture of Gordon Egg on the front; a close-up, snarling photo of a man who played his hard-bastard image like a pantomime villain. The picture was maybe five or six years old. The back cover copy was chummy, the author presenting Egg as your charming but slightly dodgy best mate: a misunderstood criminal.
I was sitting on one of the sofas dotted about downstairs in the Waterstone’s on Commercial Street. I wasn’t ready to buy the book yet, but I was prepared to browse, maybe get a coffee from the Costas upstairs.
Hard Boiled told me nothing: a bog standard biography of a man whose criminal exploits were glorified by the media and subtly approved by the z-list celebrities who frequented his nightclubs.
I read a few more pages, tried to pick up anything I didn’t already know from tattle-tale tabloids, but the simplified prose and the implicit acceptance of the man’s life and attitudes prevented me from gaining any new insight.
I gave up.
“Catching up on your reading, eh, Steed?”
I looked up and saw Constable Susan Bright standing at my table. Dressed in jeans and a black, baggy jumper. Carrying a bottle of overpriced mineral water and a chilled glass. A stray strand of dark hair flopped across the front of her face.
I gestured towards the seat across from me. She sat down in it after only a moment’s hesitation. Unscrewed the lid on her water and poured it into the glass. Took a sip before looking at me with those sharp, blue eyes.
“Is it a coincidence?” I asked. “Your being here?”
“Aye, right enough,” she said. “You never told me… when you left on compassionate grounds. You really just walked away?”
“Or was I pushed?”
“You were left pushing paper. Not what you signed on for, yeah? And definitely not the kind of work I could see you doing the rest of your life.”
“You mean sitting down? For even a minute?”
“Aye, that’s it exactly. And what you did to DI Lindsay in the canteen… I think everyone who’s ever met him wanted to do that. And it was understandable, maybe, given what happened to you… but…” She stopped talking, looked across at me as though she could somehow see the answer written behind my eyes.
I shifted my gaze.
“We need to find your client,” she said. “He’s gone missing.”
“I told you I wasn’t involved… and besides, he chucked me. I don’t go where I’m not wanted.”
It was shite and she knew it.
“He really tried, you know.”
“I’m sorry?”
“DI Lindsay. When he took over the inquiry. He really tried to find the driver of the other car.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
I shrugged.
“The two of you are as bad as each other.”
“He sent you here?”
“No. I just… he asked me to have a word with you. He said he had better things to do than listen to you bullshit him the whole time.”
“So he sent you down instead. Thoughtful. You must have pissed him off yourself.”
She swallowed hard, looked ready to slap me. Then: “If you’re hiding something from us — impeding the investigation — Lindsay won’t hesitate to smack you down.” Her voice low and controlled.
“Maybe he’ll just send you to do it instead.”
“Do you want to tell me what I did to you?”
Worse than the slap her expression had threatened.
She took a breath, carried on like she hadn’t said anything. “We’re offering you a chance to co-operate with the investigation, McNee. Do you understand that? This is your way into this. You said you wanted to see it through.”
“When you say I’ll be in, you mean that I’ll get told what happened when everything is done and that if I want to talk to anyone, I’ll have to leave a fucking message on someone’s answer phone and hope that some fucker gets back to me.”
She swigged her water.
“Fuck you,” she said, eloquently.
I thought of a time when we’d been open with each other. Friends, and then something else, and then… this.
Everything I had done since Elaine’s death looked like a deliberate attempt to isolate myself from people who cared, and perhaps even more people who didn’t.
I looked intently at my coffee, waited until she had walked past me before I looked up. My heart beat hard in my chest. When she was gone, I knocked over the coffee, watched the liquid spill over the side of the table and onto the floor. The mug shattered. People looked across. I stood up walked out.
I caught the eye of an old lady. She watched me closely, as though worried I might attack her. I shrugged as I passed her. Said, “I’m sick of coffee.”
Chapter 19
When I got back to the office, I called a solicitor I sometimes worked for, asked him if he could get me the name of a landlord from the property address. I gave him the address of the flat on Park Place where Kat was killed. Waited for him to call back.
I already knew who owned the place. I just wanted it verified.
When the solicitor called back, he told me the flat belonged to Burns Property. I thanked him for his time and hung up before I had to make small talk.
The police had to know by now. It wasn’t enough to warrant Burns’s arrest, but it was a clear indicator of his involvement.
David Burns was either getting sloppy in his old age, or someone had fucked up.
The police should have found another body by now. Some low-life waster; beaten and dumped unceremoniously in a council wheelybin. The guilty party. The Judas. Scapegoat. Whatever.
Susan was right: this was way beyond me. The police, if they ever made the connection, would probably never find Katrina Egg’s killer. Her husband had to be in on the murder. Burns wouldn’t risk starting a war with a man like Egg, even if the bastard was based several hundred miles away.
These days, London and Dundee weren’t as far apart as they used to be.
But I needed someone to blame. So what could I do? Go to Burns’s house, knock on the door and ask for the name and address of the murderer?
I’d end up dead myself.
Someone battered on my office door. Not Bill. The sound was too heavy.
“Open up, you cunt!”
A Cockney accent. Deep, harsh.
“Fuckin’ open up.”
I thought about Bill out in reception.
I opened the door, stood back.
The man outside was tall, with dark hair cut short in a near-military style. He didn’t stand like a soldier, however. More like a thug in dark-blue jeans and a black jumper. He wore a leather bomber-jacket and held a handgun.
He smiled. “You must be McNee.”
I kept quiet.
“Seen your card. Friend of ours tried to give it us. Think we must have dropped it in her flat, maybe.”
“Yeah,” said another voice. “On the rug.”
The second speaker was standing by Bill’s desk, a double-barrelled shotgun trained on Bill. He was shorter than his companion, barrel-chested and bald. He wore a long coat that swept down to his ankles and, underneath that, black jeans and a white shirt. A scar ran down his left cheek.
“You’re not with the police?” I asked.
The taller thug swung his gun arm. Cracked me across the face. I felt the weight of the gun against my jaw, and, as the pain sharpened, my stomach started to heave. I rolled with the blow and steadied myself against the doorframe.
The pain in my jaw stayed there, buzzing.
I swallowed, tasted blood.
Blinked.
Got my vision back into focus.
“Smart cunt, ain’t you?” The taller thug smiled. Nothing pleasant about it. “My name’s Mathew Ayer. My partner there is Richard Liman.”
“Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Just being polite.” Turning, like he had nothing to worry about. Ayer said to his friend, “These fucking Scottish pricks, eh?”
“Tell me about it.”
No point playing games with these two. “You work for Gordon Egg.”
“Thought you hadn’t heard of us?” Ayer’s head snapped back towards me.
“I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“Pretty smart for a tartan cunt,” Ayer conceded. “Why don’t you come out here, say hello to your friend.”
Ayer grabbed my shoulder, forced me out into reception. I didn’t resist.
I looked at Bill. He tried for a smile. A good effort, but his face was pale and his eyes were wide, his gaze flickering, like he was looking for some kind of escape.
“This fella looks like a queer,” said Liman, nodding towards Bill.
To me, Ayer said, “That right? You two bum buddies? A real man would have a hot blonde number for a secretary, right?”
I kept quiet.
Bill did likewise.
“Yeah, I reckon that’s what it is,” said Ayer. “Playing at PIs. You wear a fucking trenchcoat and a hat while you fuck him?”
“I just had fucking lunch,” Liman moaned.
Ayer laughed. “Not like there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a free country and all. You two do what you want to each other.” He looked at Liman. “Bigoted fuck,” he said. “Get with the times.”
“Don’t mean being a poof is right.”
“You’ll have to excuse my friend here. Last time inside, I think someone fucking did something turned him against your sort, know what I mean?”
My jaw throbbed. My vision kept blurring.
“Danny was a mate of mine,” Ayer said, conversationally. “You knew him?”
“No.”
“But you know his brother?”
I shrugged. He smashed me with the gun again. I went down on my knees.
Everything went out of focus.
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