It was that matter-of-fact dismissal that hit Robertson hard. There had been so much he wanted to say, so many things he could have asked. They could have talked about their father, about the years growing up together that they had lost. They could have drunk a glass of whisky in their mother’s memory.
But they did none of that.
Because Robertson found himself frightened by the money and the knife and what kind of man his brother must have become to enter his house with these things.
The way Robertson told the story, Daniel had left with barely another word. Gone like a ghost. Robertson would have been tempted to put the whole thing down to some kind of drunken hallucination, if not for the evidence left behind.
The money.
The case.
Robertson looked close to tears. He took off his bunnet and scrunched it up in his hands. Refusing to look me in the eye, he said, “I knew that the money was tainted when I saw it. Just knew. Right here.” He thumped his chest. His eyes were tearing up. He blinked a few times. “He was like those villains you see on the TV, the ones who’d kill you as soon as look at you. And I thought… if this is how he turned out…The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, right? We shared something, Daniel and me. I just couldn’t believe that he’d turn out…”
His fists clenched tight. His knuckles went white with the strain.
“I lied to you,” he said. “The police, too. Do you know how that felt? When I’ve never done anything like that in my life? No until he showed up on my doorstep. Aye, but what else could I do? I should have given them the money, everything. When they asked… If I’d done that…” He laughed. It was bitter and forced; anything to stop those tears flowing.
I wanted to ask why he didn’t. But I didn’t.
I felt nauseous, hoped it didn’t show in my expression. I waited a few seconds and said, “Your brother wasn’t a bad apple. But landing where he did, the rot set in. I don’t think it was all his fault. Maybe he could have chosen to walk away from all the bad shit that finally killed him, I don’t know. Sometimes we don’t have a choice in these things. But I think all that he wanted was a life that was worth more than the farm could ever be. He wanted to be something else. And he got that dream. But at a price.”
“Aye,” said Robertson. “Maybe, when he was hanging from that tree, feeling the rope cut into his neck, he finally understood that.” He had an odd look to his face: a cold expression that dried up the moistness of his eyes. His features set themselves in a way that made me think of his brother’s mugshot: that same pride and intensity.
I tried not to shiver.
“Sure,” I said, agreeing more out of habit than anything else. “But I want you to understand something. I don’t care whether you lied to protect your brother’s name or whether there’s something else going on here. You’ve landed us both in the shit. I get it, why you didn’t go back to the police when I asked you to the first time. Still afraid they’d see through your lie. They’d question your motives. They wouldn’t believe anything as simple as a fraternal bond. I can’t think of anyone who would be comfortable with the police sniffing around their life looking for something that wasn’t there. Because we’re all guilty.” I let it hang too long. Added, lamely, “Of something.”
He looked at me for a moment and then said, “So tell me, McNee, why haven’t you gone to the police? You could have gone at any time. Washed your hands of me and my brother and this whole mess.”
“What happened to the money?” I asked, avoiding his question.
“I kept it. Thought maybe he’d come back.” Whether that was delusion or a lie, I wasn’t sure.
“But he never did. Were you planning on using it?” I asked.
“I hadn’t thought about… Christ, what a question to ask.” He bit his bottom lip and lowered his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at me.
I felt a chill in the air. No wind, no clear sign of the temperature dropping, but it was there nonetheless. And I knew, watching his face, that Robertson felt it, too.
Chapter 29
“We don’t have a choice, do we?” Robertson said. “We have to give them what they want.”
I kept my gaze fixed on the placid surface of the Tay and the splintered sunlight that reflected off the water. Jesus, what was I doing?
“If we give them the money, they’ll leave us alone.” A hint of desperation in his voice.
I turned to face him. “Do you really believe that?”
“What else can we do?”
I struggled to find a response. Thinking about Rachel telling me how selfish I was.
Susan, in my office, telling me I was stubborn and foolish not to trust Lindsay.
Andy turning his back on me when I tried to talk to him about Bill.
Elaine’s father, his voice on the other end of the phone, tight and controlled as he told me I was a murderer and he would see me in jail if it killed him too.
And rage.
Rage that had been waiting so long to find a release.
“We can still go to the police,” I said. “We don’t have to do this.”
“If you believe that, then why haven’t you gone to them?”
I’d avoided his question once. I wanted to tell him that I had gone to the police. But the truth was that my conversation with Lindsay had been a smokescreen; a way of making myself feel as though I had at least tried to do the right thing.
“We give these thugs their money,” I said. “We tell them to leave. And that’s the end to it. They have nothing to fear from us.”
“Aye,” said Robertson. “After all, who are we to them?”
But I saw it in his face. He knew I was lying. Even if he had believed me, I knew the shame that gathered like rocks in my stomach would still have weighed me down as I realised that this could only end badly.
Driving back across the bridge, I was still thinking about Robertson’s question: “If you believe that, then why haven’t you gone to them?”
Lindsay had said I was pissing on someone else’s territory, that I did this kind of thing because I was a selfish prick. Could he have a point? Part of me was beginning to question my own motives, as though I couldn’t even trust myself any more.
Not that it mattered. Over the last few days, I’d regressed to where I’d been after the accident: retreating inwards. Seeking solace with grim reflections on the violence and suffering that I had encountered. The difference was that now I could definitively deal with these feelings. I had someone to blame.
Real.
Tangible.
I could hurt them.
Again, I imagined the life fading from their eyes. Their blood on the ground.
Knowing that no one would regret their deaths. Not after everything they had done.
As I drove across the bridge, the heat of the late afternoon sun warmed my skin. I thought about the fire that had burned Robertson’s house to the ground. The smoke that had choked up the sky.
When I was a copper, I arrested a fifteen year old boy who liked to set fire to things. He’d started out small, with insects, but quickly graduated onto abandoned buildings. I caught him trying to burn an abandoned mill on Guthrie Street. He had later responded well in the interview, but what I remembered most was when he said, “I love fire. Flames. They get me hard.”
“Why?”
“Release, isn’t it? Fire fucking purifies everything. Burns what you don’t need.”
And I realised that what I was doing was starting a little fire of my own. Waiting for purification and for the past to crumble away into ashes.
Chapter 30
“Can’t say I thought much of your message.”
Susan stood in the door. In full uniform. Her expression stern.
If I was a crook, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“I didn’t really intend to leave one.”
She nodded, walked in. Stopped when she saw the faded bloodstain on the floor.
“How is he? Your friend.”
“He’s fine. I think.”
“You think?”
“I haven’t been to see him. I called, but…”
“He can’t blame you.”
“His boyfriend can.”
She considered that for a moment. “My mother would have said you’d make a fine martyr.”
I didn’t ask what Susan would say.
Tearing her gaze away from the floor, she said, “The DI said you came to see him the other day.”
“That was a mistake. I thought I had something to say and… I didn’t.”
“Maybe. He asked me if I could have a word with you. Said he thought I might be able to convince you to see sense.”
“Aye?”
“Right enough, seeing as he thinks we’re friends.”
“Are we?”
She walked past the desk, dropped into the recliner. “I’m not a little girl, Steed. I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t hurt by what happened but… you were in mourning and I was… in my own place. We needed each other.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“It has everything to do with it. It’s the way you are. Someone reaches out and you pull away. Always amazed me how she ever managed to make you love her in the first place.”
My stomach tightened. “Don’t bloody do this.”
“I’m sorry, Steed. But you can’t go around treating everyone like the enemy. Some of us are your friends. Hell, even a prick like Lindsay, he isn’t out to get you. He’s not the bad guy.”
“Bastard’s turned you around.”
“Lindsay’s a good copper. Maybe it doesn’t make him a great human being, but it doesn’t make him an evil bastard, either.” Her face softened. “Maybe I said some things before… in the heat of the moment. You bring that out in people.”
“Yeah?” I thought of Elaine’s father. The heat of the moment lasting almost a year.
“Yeah,” she said. “I always liked you, Steed, you know that? Always thought your heart was in the right place.”
Susan wasn’t the type of person to backtrack. She’d always been straightforward, meaning every word she said.
“Four people have died,” Susan said. “Because of something you know or something your client, the farmer, knows.” And there she was: Constable Susan, again. Her humanity gone, hidden behind the armour that every copper needs to wear on the job.
“Four people?”
“Daniel Robertson. Katrina Egg. And the two men who died this afternoon. That’s why you called me, right?” A crack appeared in her armour, but only for a moment. “They were no accounts, really. Local hard men. Shot to death in Burns’s front hall. Burns himself… someone gave him a real good kicking. He’s stable, but refusing to talk. No surprise there. He says he can’t think of a reason why he was attacked. He didn’t know his assailants. A mugging. His words, not ours.” I must have let something slip, because she kept going. “And you know something, right, Steed? Or at least you have your suspicions.”
I shook my head.
But I had more than just suspicions.
“This is a police matter, now. You can keep your client confidentiality and all that other nonsense as close to your chest as you want. If you keep pushing us away, more people are going to get hurt.”
I clenched my jaw, pushed my teeth together so tight it began to hurt, the pain shooting up the side of my face and pounding into my head.
“So maybe you want to think about it,” she said.
I stood, quiet for a moment, unsure how to respond. And then: “If you were anyone else, I’d have told you go fuck yourself.”
She stepped back, holding her breath. I thought maybe she was about to explode, but instead she merely let out a little sigh. “I thought I knew you a little better, Steed,” she said, before turning to walk out of the office.
I waited a moment, went out on the stairwell. Found her card lying at the top of the stairs. Maybe she expected me to call her when I calmed down. I picked up the card, screwed it up in my fist and let it drop back to the floor.
When I went back into the office, I upended Bill’s desk.
And then tried to work out if I felt any better.
Chapter 31
I was back at the hospital early that evening.
Not to see Bill. I had other concerns.
A heavy-set man stood outside the private room, large arms folded across his expansive chest. The doctors and nurses passing the door kept their distance.
I made to walk through like the big man wasn’t even there.
He grabbed me by the shoulder. Tight. Even underneath the baggy shellsuit he was wearing, it was clear that his bulk was all muscle. He brought his face close to mine. Assaulted me with stale breath.
“Can I ask your business?” Polite but threatening.
“My name’s McNee,” I said. “He knows who I am.”
“What do you want with Mr Burns?” Enunciating each word as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“It’s private.”
He looked at me suspiciously and then said, “Hold on,” motioning for me to wait. He opened the door and walked inside.
A doctor walked past, eyed me suspiciously. “I didn’t realise you employed private security,” I said. He kept walking, his head down.
I could have listened, but I didn’t think there’d be anything worth hearing. Besides, if the walking meat slab came out and found me eavesdropping, I doubted he’d wait to hear my excuses. Probably make sure I got my own private room.
When he came out, he said, “In you go.”
I moved past him. Inside the room, there was a single window on the far wall and a toilet area through a second door. But Burns wasn’t getting up to go anywhere.
When I saw him that morning he had been an old man who still buzzed with the anger of his youth. Unafraid, unbowed, and unbroken.
Now, his reputation, everything he had worked so hard to maintain, had been stripped from him. I looked at him wrapped in white hospital sheets, his face lined and his skin pale where it wasn’t blotted dark with bruises. A corpse that didn’t realise it was supposed to be dead.
“Take a seat.” His voice was soft, lacking the edge I’d noted during our last conversation.
I sat down, made sure the chair stayed a good distance from the bed.
“Your limp’s looking better, son.”
I hadn’t even thought about it. Seven months ago when I’d come to the hospital for my last session, the psychiatrist had said, “You know there’s nothing wrong with your leg.” I’d called him on talking crap. “I’ve seen your medical records. Okay, you were hurt in the accident, but you should be on the mend. I have to wonder whether it’s something else.”
It wasn’t supposed to be our last session, but that’s when I told him where he could stick his analysis.
“You owe me,” Burns said when I failed to acknowledge his observation.
“I don’t owe you anything,” I said. “What’s changed for me? What’s changed for my client?”
“I put my fucking life on the line for you and your client, son,” he said and if his voice had been capable of it, he would have shouted. However, the words came out weak and hushed. “Look at what it got me.”
“They didn’t kill you.”
“No bastard’s going to kill me.”
I shook my head. “They meant to leave you alive.”
“A mistake.”
“No, I don’t think it was. They’re saying that you’re nothing. They want you to know that they don’t care if you live. Because you can’t touch them.”
“That’s a mistake, too. These pricks, they can’t help making them.”
“You and your kind don’t lash out at each other for no good reason. At least not the old school fellas. You’ve got a code of honour, even vicious bastards like Egg. So this was personal.”
He couldn’t look me in the eye.
“Five years ago, you would have quietly had those two bastards disappe
ar the minute that woman turned up dead. It was an affront to you. On your turf, no less. Gordon Egg wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if you’d taught them a lesson. You and Egg are such close friends that his men should accord you a certain amount of respect on your home turf. Unless all of that’s changed and you just didn’t bother making it public knowledge. Because God knows how much damage that could do to your reputation elsewhere.”
I scratched the chair forward across the floor, getting in close. Adrenaline rushed through me. My face was hot and it was an effort to speak as my jaw clenched. I felt like finishing the job that Egg’s thugs had started.
The words came out slow and measured. “You knew all of that when I came to see you. You knew you were fucked, that you couldn’t help me even if you wanted to. But I guess it was some misplaced pride made you pretend you could still do anything you wanted. You’re getting sloppy in your old age. Funny, isn’t it? Egg’s on top and he’s making sure he kicks you all the way down to the bottom. Maybe already grooming some smart young thing to take your place? Who’s the next big player up here, eh? Or do you want me to ask around? Since I guess you’re no longer in the loop.”
His breathing changed. Slower, now. Harder. Forcing himself to keep calm. The veins stood out in his neck. “Do you know about the two dead lads?” he asked.
“It was on the news. A couple of thugs.”
“Aye, you fucking prick. Call them that if you like, but they were some mother’s sons. Good lads.”
Did he ever think, I wondered, about the people he’d killed? Realise that they, too, were some mother’s sons?
I doubted that it ever crossed his mind.
“I’m going to be around for a long time yet, son,” he said. “And that fucking turncoat cunt, he’ll be fucking sorry his lads didn’t kill me.”
I stood up. “I know them.”
He looked at me with dead eyes.
“I know their names,” I said. “Tell me about them.”
“Are you going to go crying to the police with their names, tell the coppers about the bad boys who threatened you?”
The Good Son Page 12