Falling Fast

by Neil Broadfoot

  He had no sympathy for Charlie, or what became of him. He had taken his chance, and Derek was in no doubt that Charlie had been intent on killing him, and failed. The consequences were his own fault. He was playing with the big boys now.

  Driving back into Edinburgh, Derek went over last night in his mind. It was pitifully obvious who had sent Charlie, and why, but the question was, how? How had he – or Charlie – known that he had gone back to Prestonview?

  It was possible they would know he was back in the Lothians, but in Prestonview, on that night? Nah, someone had told them. But who?

  Derek considered his dad, then dismissed that idea, ashamed. His dad may have loathed him for what he had done and the trouble he had brought down upon him and his mum, but there was no way he would have sold Derek out. His mum might have for the right price, Derek was pretty sure of that, but not his dad. Never.

  So how? Derek had told no one and, as far as he was aware, neither had his dad. So how had he – how had they – known?

  He pushed down harder on the accelerator and pulled out into the fast lane, eager to be in Edinburgh. Eager to see him and ask that very question.

  • • •

  Back at his desk, Doug went over the notes he had taken during his talk with Tom Allan, a sergeant at Prestonview police station. Although Allan was one of those cagey police officers who thought every question a journalist asked was a trap waiting to be sprung, he had revealed that the car park where Jimmy had found the knife and blood was being sealed off pending forensic analysis.

  Luckily, he said, it hadn’t been raining the night before, so there was a chance that there were still some clues – other than the obvious – about what had happened there. He had been reluctant, but finally relented and agreed that Doug could call him later on in the day to see if anything had turned up.

  It wasn’t strictly by the book – officially, all press enquiries were meant to go through the press office – but Allan was enough of a realist to understand that just meant more paperwork and bureaucracy for him to deal with.

  Doug was itching to phone him, but forced himself to wait. Patience, he told himself. Forensic tests take time. Hours. Sometimes even days. But he needed to know if they had found anything. Anything that might show McGinty had made it back home. A blood-stained car park and a knife were right up his street. But was Doug reaching, was it just something unrelated that he was trying to shoehorn into fitting somewhere else because he wanted it to?

  He had phoned the McGinty home, no answer, and when he had gone round, the other reporters and TV crews camped outside said there had been no movement all morning. Was Derek there? Doug didn’t think so. He had rung the door anyway and Sam McGinty had answered. His response to Doug was terse and gruff – no change there – but Doug had seen nothing in his tone or manner to indicate Sam was hiding his son indoors. And, without anything else to go on, what could he do? Nothing.

  He needed Allan to give him some proof. Needed something concrete. Walter had mentioned that Greig was getting tired with the whole Derek McGinty story – or lack of it – and was ready to pull the plug. Doug couldn’t argue, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up on it yet, and at least this gave him a link to the town.

  He was just trying to write up a story on the latest crime-fighting initiative in Edinburgh city centre – the controversial and ground-breaking ‘put more officers on the street’ strategy – when his phone rang.

  ‘Hey, Doug, it’s me.’

  ‘Hey, Susie,’ Doug replied, slightly surprised she was calling. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘But I was wondering if you could do me a favour?’

  Doug felt his eyebrows rise slightly. Unusual. ‘Sure, what?’

  ‘Can you check in your library, see if the Tribune’s ever done anything on the Altered Perspective art gallery or a photographer called Eric Mullard?’

  ‘That spelled like it sounds?’

  Susie spelled the name out for him.

  ‘So,’ he asked, ‘I take it this has got something to do with your chat with Lizzie Renwick this morning. How’d that go?’

  ‘Interesting,’ Susie said after just enough of a pause to let him know she wasn’t going to give him any details. ‘But I’m not too sure how much of what she said is of any use.’

  ‘That why you want this info, try and fill in the blanks yourself?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s more for my own curiosity than anything else.’

  Doug doubted it, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ll get back to you if I find anything,’ he said, ready to hang up the phone.

  ‘Thanks for that, Doug. Oh, one more thing. Have you heard anything about the knife from Prestonview you were asking about earlier?’

  ‘Now how the hell did you know about…?’

  ‘You’re not the only one with contacts, Doug. Let me know if you hear anything interesting. See ya.’

  Doug hung up, a smile on his face. Typical Susie.

  He called up the online library on his computer, punched in ‘Altered Perspective gallery’ and sat back to see what it gave him. The answer was nothing. As usual, the damn thing refused to work, giving him a standard ‘too many users logged on’ message.

  ‘Brilliant,’ he muttered. So much for that idea. There was always the actual library in the basement of the building, where all the back issues of the Tribune stretching back over its eighty years were kept. All he would have to do was phone down, give some rough dates and ask a librarian to dig the stuff out for him. He looked at the clock on his screen. Later.

  Doug turned his attention back to the story on screen. It was terminally dull, but at least it was something to do, something to keep him from phoning Allan and quizzing him.

  Twenty minutes and a few phone calls to the relevant police officers, shop owners and councillors later, it was done. He read it through one last time, used the spell-checker, then sent it across to the newsdesk.

  Thank God. Done. What now? He smiled. Dumb question.

  He dialled Tom Allan at Prestonview.

  ‘Hi, Tom,’ he said as the sergeant answered the phone. ‘It’s Doug McGregor. I was just wondering if you’d found out anything on that car and knife yet?’

  ‘Ah, Doug… good to hear from you,’ Allan stuttered, sounding like a man who had just got a bad call from the clap clinic. ‘Eh, no… no. Not yet. Listen, why don’t you give me your number and I’ll call you back when I do?’

  Doug reeled off his work and mobile numbers, wondering what the hell had gotten into Allan. Probably nothing, he realised, more likely was the fact he just didn’t like being phoned by a quote-hungry, impatient hack at work.

  He was just hanging up when Penny, one of the other reporters who Doug occasionally wished he had the looks and courage to ask out for a drink sometime, wandered up to his desk. He swallowed back the sudden dryness in his throat, had a sudden pang of paranoia about having a bit of breakfast stuck between his teeth.

  ‘Hiya, Doug. Sorry to interrupt, but this was delivered for you when you were out earlier on.’ She handed him a letter-sized envelope.

  ‘Thanks,’ he murmured, forcing his gaze to remain on her face. She smiled and wandered off, leaving him to watch her go. What a useless wanker, he thought. Patter like that, no wonder no woman will come within ten feet of you. He tore open the envelope. Inside was a folded piece of paper, with a note beside it:

  I told you I’d send you something to prove it. Here you go. McGinty pushed her.

  Doug felt a cold knot twist in his stomach. Quickly, his fingers numb, he unfolded the piece of paper, which felt laminated and smooth like a…

  …photograph. It was an old and battered photo of a group of people standing in the sun, smiling for the camera. There were about six of them, standing in a rough group in what looked like a park. Behind them there was a building, the sign on which Doug couldn’t quite read.

  He scanned the faces, looking for detail. Then stopped. Heard breath w
heeze out of him as though he was a tyre with a puncture… felt his pulse roar in his temples.

  No. No, it can’t be.

  He flailed for a second edition of yesterday’s paper and flicked through the pages. When he found what he was looking for, he held the photograph up to it. No mistake. It was. Oh Jesus, it was.

  Two pictures of Katherine Buchan stared up at Doug from his desk. One was from the Tribune, the photograph her parents had released as part of their appeal for information. The other was battered, old, tatty. In it, she was smiling at the camera, just another young woman with a group of friends.

  But standing behind her, one of those friends was Derek McGinty.

  21

  Hal shook Ronnie’s hand at the main entrance to his offices – a huge castle-like building with a two-storey glass frontage that dominated a corner of Lothian Road.

  ‘Just remember, that’s all off-the-record gossip,’ Ronnie told him, ‘I’m not sure what use any of it’ll do you. But I hope it helps.’

  ‘“Help” isn’t really the word I’d go for,’ Hal said with a smile. ‘But thanks, anyway.’

  Ronnie gave a theatrical half-bow. ‘Happy to help any time. You take care, Hal. Give Jennifer a kiss for me, tell Colin I said hi.’

  ‘I will. Give my love to Angie and Amy.’

  Ronnie nodded, then waddled up the steps to the double doors. Turned to wave one last time, then disappeared inside.

  Hal crossed the road, then walked down a narrow lane beside a multi-storey car park and towards the Grassmarket and the main run of pubs in the city. It had been an after-work favourite area when he had been working with Ronnie, and it was also popular with tourists and students. From here, he could follow the road all the way down to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.

  He made a quick call, got Jonathan to make sure everyone was gathered for a meeting in an hour, then gave him a couple of phone numbers to chase down and text back to him. As always, Jonathan was his sickeningly enthusiastic self. Hal wondered how long that enthusiasm would last when he told them Buchan was going to be taking a leave of absence from his parliamentary seat to look after his wife at this ‘traumatic and painful time’. Wondered how much of what Ronnie had told him he would have to share to make them see it was the only thing to do.

  Buchan had first dipped his toe into politics as a local councillor for Stockbridge back in the late Nineties. Given his legal background, it wasn’t a surprise that he ended up on the city council’s board for the then Lothian and Borders Police, making a name for himself by challenging the Labour administration of the day on every decision they made that was seen to erode the ability of the police to do the job.

  ‘A lot of folk at the time thought the Chief Constable, who’s now Chief Superintendent after the shift to Police Scotland, was helping him with his lines,’ Ronnie had said. ‘Buchan was the mouthpiece and got the headlines, the Chief got his points across about budgets and staffing levels. Win-win all round.’

  Win-win, indeed. Until Buchan did his best to fuck it all up.

  It happened, according to Ronnie, at the time of Buchan’s campaign for a Scottish Parliament seat. The official version of events was that Buchan was out late and driving home after tirelessly campaigning for the people. His head full of great and noble thoughts, he missed a corner, tried to overcorrect and ploughed his car into a lamppost.

  Hal paused in the street, used his iPhone to find the news articles from the time and read them. It wasn’t a big story. ‘Would-be politician in car crash shock’ was about the size of it, although one of the papers had a bit of fun and headlined it ‘Tory has an illuminating moment and veers to the left.’ Buchan was quoted being suitably embarrassed, promising to pay for the damaged lamppost and gravely warning that he had learned the lessons of driving while overly tired.

  No harm. No foul. Except not one of the reports mentioned the young woman who had been standing between the lamppost and Buchan’s car when he ran off the road.

  According to Ronnie – who had heard the story from a colleague who worked for the police and had a tongue that was easily loosened with just the right blend of whisky and flattery – Buchan’s first call after hitting the girl had been to the Chief Constable. Forget an ambulance to help the poor kid, who had been thrown across the pavement by the force of the impact, breaking her arm and a couple of ribs and leaving her face looking as though she had tried to exfoliate with a cheese grater. No, Buchan was more concerned about how he would get by with a little help from his friends.

  The Chief got personally involved, spoke to the police officers and ambulance crew who were called to the scene, and made sure the girl was effectively deleted from history. According to Ronnie’s contact, she was never mentioned in the police reports and, when taken to hospital, the ambulance crew reported her as being found about two miles west of where the ‘accident’ took place.

  ‘Don’t worry about the kid,’ Ronnie had told Hal, ‘she was well taken care of. Got a wee visit from her friendly polis, along with a nice payday to make sure she wasn’t too inconvenienced by the whole ordeal. Made a full recovery, I heard, living up in Dundee now.’

  Hal stopped at a coffee shop, ordered a strong black to take away. Cursed slightly as the first mouthful scalded his tongue.

  Whatever way he looked at it, it was a PR disaster. He wrote the headlines in his head, didn’t like what they were telling him. ‘Crusading MSP in hit-and-run cover-up shocker’, ‘Justice Bill Tory covered up crime with Police Chief’; the bad news just kept on coming. It didn’t matter if it was true or not, with all the coverage that was being generated by his daughter’s death, the mere hint of scandal would mean Buchan would be plastered over the media 24/7. And it was only a matter of time before a reporter somewhere stumbled on the story, made the connections. A reporter with police contacts, say. A reporter like Doug McGregor.

  So much for my mate Marmite, Hal thought bitterly.

  He briefly toyed with the idea of leaking the whole thing to the press himself – McGregor was the obvious choice – and just gutting Buchan there and then. But if he did that, the party would be guilty by association, giving the press a free hand to look at other leading Tories who had broken the law. The names tripped off the tongue: Archer, Hamilton, Aitken. No, better to keep quiet, quell press interest in the daughter suicide story as quickly as possible, and get Buchan off the stage by announcing a leave of absence. It was an easy enough sell after his daughter’s death: it would only be natural that the grieving father would want to take some time off to be with his wife.

  Hal was getting ready to phone Edward in London, fill him in on the latest. He was halfway through keying the number in when a text flashed up from Jonathan. The message was simple: ‘Chief Superintendent Adam Paulson’s number as requested, boss. Will ping you McGregor’s in a mo. See you at the meeting. J.’

  Hal sent back a quick thanks, then dialled the number. Mr Paulson liked to help his friend out, and the best way he could do that now was to finish up the investigation into Katherine Buchan’s death ASAP. As he listened to the ringtone, his phone beeped; Jonathan, no doubt, sending him McGregor’s number. While he wasn’t ready to sacrifice Buchan yet, it wouldn’t hurt to build a few bridges.

  Just in case.

  22

  Susie shifted uncomfortably in the small, moulded plastic chair she was perched on in DI Burns’ office. Across a table cluttered with paperwork, a computer and half-drunk cups of coffee, Third Degree sat reading her report on the interview with Lizzie Renwick. His lips moved silently as he read.

  Burns’ office was a small, sparse box of a room, which had been partitioned off from the rest of the open-plan CID suite with plywood walls that shook whenever the door was opened or shut. Despite a strict non-smoking policy in the building, the smell of stale cigarettes hung in the air and, glancing up, Susie could see the telltale muddy-brown stains creeping up the walls in the corners of the room.

  Rank, and an office with a windo
w, had their privileges.

  Apart from the stains and the institutional dull green paint, the walls in Burns’ office were bare, except for a single large photograph that hung behind him. In it, Burns and his family on some foreign beach, squinting into the camera for the classic family pose. His wife, a full-figured woman who was a good three or four inches taller than Burns, cradled a small baby to her more-than-ample bosom as two other small children – Susie guessed they were both seven or eight years old, at most – clung to her, beaming with gap-toothed grins.

  The boys looked like shrunken versions of their father: heavy brows, thick-set bodies that were obviously no stranger to the Scottish staples of grease and fat, flame-red hair. Susie could only imagine the torments they endured at school.

  ‘So,’ Burns said, jogging her from her thoughts as he leaned back, his chair squealing a soft, resigned protest as he shifted his considerable bulk, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure, sir. There’s something she’s not telling us, though. The way she reacted when I asked if Katherine had a boyfriend, or someone she would talk to if she had a problem, was a little too sharp for my liking.’

  Burns nodded agreement. ‘Hmm, and what about this phone call she mentioned’, he flicked through the pages of the report again, ‘when Renwick says Katherine was upset and shouting, “it’s the price you agreed”?’

  Susie shrugged her shoulders. ‘She says she doesn’t know what it was about, sir. I’ve checked the gallery’s books, and she was telling the truth about one thing, at least: there are no outstanding invoices to be paid.’

  ‘But you think there’s more to it than that?’

  Susie thought back to the way Lizzie had recovered from her questioning. Too practised. Too professional. She would expect that from someone used to being interviewed by the police, not a gallery assistant. ‘Just an impression, sir, but yes, I think there’s something there worth our attention.’