Falling Fast

by Neil Broadfoot

  ‘Well,’ Burns sighed, reaching forward for one of the cups of coffee in front of him. He took a noisy slurp, grimaced. Cold. ‘Keep digging. But I’m already getting heat from the powers-that-be to wrap this up. They’re keen to keep Mr Buchan happy, and a protracted investigation into his daughter’s tragic suicide isn’t seen as the best way to do that.’

  ‘So, we’re definite on the suicide angle?’ Susie asked. It was the way she was thinking herself; the fact that they had found Katherine’s purse and credit cards in her flat earlier in the day only added to the theory that it was a suicide rather than a robbery gone wrong. But still, there was that phone call Doug had received. It wasn’t unusual for reporters to get crank calls or letters when there was a high-profile death in the news – she remembered Doug telling her he had once received a letter from a man claiming to have killed Michael Jackson by psychically ordering his doctor to give him an overdose of sleeping pills and Pepsi – but, there were loose ends to be tied up here, and she was damned if she would let them be swept under the carpet in the name of political convenience.

  ‘It’s looking that way,’ Burns nodded, not sounding entirely convinced. ‘And the Chief’s not keen on making Buchan unhappy by dragging this out. But,’ he sighed, adjusting himself in his chair again, ‘I meant what I said, Susie, no shortcuts. If you find anything interesting in the background checks on Renwick, then let me know.’

  Susie nodded and got up, glad to be out of the ass-numbing chair. She got the feeling Burns wouldn’t be quite so eager to let her keep digging around if he knew some of the sources she was using. She didn’t think Doug McGregor was on Burns’ Christmas card list.

  She had just settled back at her desk when her phone began to ring. By the time she reached for it, it had gone dead. She was about to pick it up and dial 1471 when she noticed a manila envelope had been put on her desk. Glancing at the front, she saw it was internal mail from the records department. Susie fished out the papers and began reading. After about three lines she forgot all about finding out who had just called her. What she had in front of her was far more interesting than any wrong number.

  • • •

  Doug dropped the phone back into its receiver, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After the initial shock of seeing McGinty and Katherine Buchan together in the photograph had worn off, his first impulse had been to phone Susie. A story was a story, but this… this changed everything. It meant there was a very good chance that whoever had called him the other day wasn’t just another crank, that McGinty had indeed pushed Katherine from the top of the Scott Monument. If the bloodbath in Prestonview was McGinty’s handiwork, then the times and locations fit. It meant that the police should be looking at a murder rather than a suicide. It meant that McGinty was in the area.

  It meant Doug had a chance of finding him.

  He had snatched up the phone and got as far as dialling Susie’s number before the journalist in him spoke up. What did he have? An old photograph with a handwritten note tying the daughter of a well-known politician to a convicted rapist.

  An envelope with a postage mark too smudged to be read. It could have been posted from anywhere, from Edinburgh to Essex. And if he called in the police now – even Susie – he would lose an exclusive on the biggest story of the year, and all because he played by the rulebook.

  Nah. Playground rules. Mine. He would share with Susie soon. First, he wanted to see what he could find out.

  He took the photo over to the picture desk where Terry Hewson, the Tribune’s picture editor, was hunched over a screen, pouring over images that were being sent to the newspaper via an international wire service.

  ‘Got a minute, Terry?’

  ‘For you, Douglas, anything,’ Terry replied as he swung round in his chair. He was a small, compact man with neat dark hair carefully combed to hide a growing bald spot. A pair of half-moon glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose, meaning he was always tilting his head up when he spoke. To Doug, he looked like one of those lecturers he’d seen on Open University programmes.

  ‘Could you have a look at this photo, tell me a bit more about it?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Terry held the picture close to his face to study it, adjusting his glasses as he did. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything you can tell me,’ Doug said, trying to keep the pleading tone out of his voice.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing much I can tell you about the photo itself,’ Terry said. ‘Seems to be a fairly standard Polaroid, but…’ He paused for a moment.

  ‘Jesus, have you seen this?’ He pointed to the note that was in the envelope, which Doug had clipped to the picture.

  Doug bit back the thousand sarcastic responses that flitted through his mind. ‘Why do you think I’m so interested in it?’ he said, careful to keep his tone neutral.

  Terry said nothing, merely nodded. ‘You think there’s any truth to it?’

  Doug felt a scream tickle the back of his throat. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. But I want to find out. So is there anything you can do to help…?’

  ‘Well, we could scan the photo in, see if we can sharpen up the background, try to give you a better idea of where they are?’

  ‘Great,’ Doug replied. He felt like grabbing Terry by the scruff of the neck and screaming at him to get on with it. He resisted the urge, but only just. In frustration, he wheeled away and strode down the newsroom. He barely stopped to knock as he burst into the editor’s office.

  ‘Doug, what…?’

  ‘Sorry, Jonathan, but I think you should come up to Terry’s desk for a minute. I’ve got something I think you’re going to want to see.’

  23

  It was one of those pubs where everyone turned round the moment the door squealed open. But when they saw Charlie’s ruined and bruised face, the curious suddenly found their pints fascinating. In a place like this, it didn’t do to ask any questions.

  Charlie walked into the pub, pausing briefly to order a double Grouse at the bar. The barman, a twitchy-looking kid whose left forearm was dominated by a maroon heart-shaped tattoo around which the legend ‘HMFC Forever’ was tightly curled, made sure not to catch Charlie’s eye as he served him. Charlie was something of a regular in the bar. His face spelled trouble on a good day. But today…

  Taking his drink, Charlie headed for the back of the pub, where two old and tatty-looking pool tables sat surrounded by three booth-style seating areas. It didn’t matter what condition the tables were in, they were never used anyway. This was not a place for games, it was a place for business. Very serious business.

  Charlie slid into the booth nearest to him, nodded a greeting to Henry, the mass of muscle prowling like a bulldog in the shadows at the back of the pub – the criminal equivalent of visible deterrent. Henry’s arms were even more ornately decorated with Hearts FC tattoos than the barman’s.

  A cadaverous-looking man with cheekbones so sharp they threatened to poke through his jaundiced skin looked up from a racing paper as Charlie settled into the seat opposite him.

  ‘Charlie, Charlie,’ he drawled, small beady eyes darting across Charlie’s injuries, ‘you have been in the wars, haven’t you?’

  Dessie Banks may have looked liked a frail old man with a liver problem, but he was one of the most feared and respected men in Edinburgh. From his ‘office’ in this Gorgie pub, Dessie organised protection, extortion, and contract deals for more than half the city. Someone owe you some cash and unwilling to repay? No problem, see Dessie. For a small fee, he would see you got the money back, plus a few of the debtor’s teeth as a souvenir. Someone else shagging your wife? No problem, one meeting with Dessie and the guy was landfill. The wife, too, if you had the cash. And so on. Charlie had worked for Dessie a few times himself, collecting debts and occasionally dealing for him in some clubs around town and, during that time, the golden lesson he had learned was simple and absolute. Do not fuck with Dessie Banks.

  ‘You could say that, Dessie,’
he sighed, taking a gulp of his whisky, grimacing at the bright flash of pain as he opened his mouth. ‘Do you have it?’

  Dessie smiled slightly, revealing a row of rotting teeth. ‘I wasn’t sure why you wanted this when you first called,’ he said, reaching into a small bag that sat beside him. ‘After all, I always thought you were a knife man. But now that I see this’, he waved a bony, claw-like hand in front of Charlie’s face, ‘I understand. You after a bit of payback, are you, Charlie?’

  Charlie’s eyes burned from the swollen mass of bruising surrounding them. ‘Oh yes,’ he whispered, his voice a lisping rasp thanks to his shattered teeth. ‘That’s exactly what I’m after.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Dessie nodded, placing the bag on the table between them and resting his hand on it. ‘Payback costs, Charlie, you of all people should know that. Do you have the money?’

  Charlie fished into his pocket and threw a fat wad of cash onto the table. His employer hadn’t been happy at having to pay for this, or the fact that Charlie had insisted this was the only way to get the job done, but what did he know? He wasn’t the one getting beaten half to death and then robbed in a shit-stained car park. He wasn’t the one feeling like someone was gouging the marrow out of his teeth with blunt needles as a steel band was tightened around his head.

  Fuck him. They had tried it his way, and Charlie was paying the price. Now they did things his way.

  Dessie fingered the cash greedily then slid the bag across the table. Charlie dropped it into his lap and unwrapped the greasy towel the bag held. What was there was surprisingly heavy for something so small, so lethal.

  ‘Think that’ll get the job done?’ Dessie asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Charlie replied, eyes not moving from the pistol. Pain flared across his face as he smiled. He didn’t care. ‘Thanks, Dessie, I think this’ll do very nicely.’

  24

  Doug was just passing the ‘Welcome to Prestonview’ sign when his phone rang. He glanced down at the screen, winced, then hit answer.

  ‘Susie,’ he said, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Hey, Doug. Where are you, I thought you were going to be in the office this afternoon?’

  ‘Ah… yeah, I was, I was. But something came up. I’m just heading to an interview.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Susie replied. She sounded impatient. ‘Anyway, I was just phoning to see if you had found anything on Altered Perspective yet?’

  Doug glanced at the clock on his dashboard. 3.30pm, just over an hour since she had last called. Susie never hassled him about stuff unless it was important. She was onto something, he was sure of it. Question was, what?

  ‘Eh, not yet, I kind of got caught up and haven’t heard back from the library yet.’ It was half-true; he hadn’t called the Tribune’s library at all, but he had got caught up once the picture of McGinty and Katherine together had arrived.

  After he had barged in on Greig and filled him in on the situation, a hasty conference had been called. Walter – whose only comment on the photograph had been a whispered ‘not exactly a good quality pic for the front, is it?’ – had been called into Greig’s office, along with Terry and, at Doug’s request, the Tribune’s political editor, Andy Wilkes.

  Walter’s first thought, to run a late second edition with a new front page and a story about the picture, had been grudgingly dismissed by Greig, but Doug could tell he wasn’t totally happy with the decision. He couldn’t blame him. On the one hand he had every editor’s dream: an exclusive angle on the biggest story of the day linking the tragic daughter of a well-known politician with a notorious criminal. But on the other hand, he had nothing.

  Sure, he had the picture, but what else? An anonymous note saying McGinty had killed Katherine. Not exactly a trustworthy source. And while the picture itself raised more than a few interesting questions, it wasn’t proof. It didn’t show McGinty was connected to Katherine’s death. No, the story was theirs, an exclusive. Better to wait, do a bit of digging and see what they could find.

  Terry reported that the picture had been scanned into the computer, and he was going to see what he could do about sharpening up the image and getting more details. Part of the problem, he said, was that the picture was faded and crumpled, with heavy creases across the main frame, but he would do what he could. Again, Doug bit back the urge to grab Terry and frogmarch him back to his machine. He wanted answers. He wanted the story. Now.

  ‘Oh well,’ Susie sighed, shaking him from his thoughts. ‘Guess it’s not that important, anyway. Can you let me know if you find anything, though?’

  Find anything; that was a laugh. He’d found something alright. And he was going to have to tell her about it sooner or later. But not yet. He had a few questions he wanted to ask uninterrupted first. And to do that he would need the photograph, a copy of which was tucked in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘Listen, Susie, you going to be free in about an hour?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, a note of caution her voice. She was still worried about them being seen together while the Chief Superintendent was inquiring about how the Tribune had got the inside track on the suicide of his friend’s daughter. ‘I’ve got an interview myself. What’s up?’

  Doug took a deep breath. Why did lying to her feel so wrong? ‘I’ve found something I think you’re going to want to see.’

  ‘But I thought you said you hadn’t had time to look into the gallery for me?’

  ‘I didn’t. It’s not that, it’s something else.’ He turned off Prestonview Main Street and into the small estate where Sam and Rita McGinty lived. He noticed that a couple of the reporters’ cars had disappeared and couldn’t help but smile. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll phone you when we get done and we can maybe meet up, okay?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Susie let the silence hang on the line for a moment, giving Doug time to volunteer some details. It made her nervous when he got mysterious, but it was clear that was the way he was going to play it. ‘Speak to you soon, Doug.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll give you a call,’ he said and cut the line.

  He parked his car, picked up his notepad and got out. Nodded a few hellos to the reporters and TV crews he knew as he walked up the pathway. He knocked on the door of the McGintys’ home and waited. After a moment, Sam McGinty opened the door slightly. He left the door chain on.

  ‘You again,’ he hissed. ‘Look, I thought I told you this morning, I don’t know anything. I haven’t seen Derek and even if I had…’

  Doug held up the copy of the photo, making sure it was facing straight towards Sam McGinty, mindful of how many bored journalists with telephoto lenses were sitting in the street behind him. He watched as Sam’s eyes went wide with shock and recognition as he realised what he was looking at.

  Bingo.

  ‘I think you do know something, Mr McGinty,’ Doug said slowly, trying to sound as friendly as possible. ‘I think you have seen your son, or at least spoken with him on the phone. Look, my paper is going to run this picture, one way or another. Now, do you want us to go with what we usually do – Derek McGinty, the infamous rapist – or do you want us to tell our readers about the man in this picture, the man who looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world?’

  Sam McGinty opened his mouth, but it was a woman’s voice that spoke. She sounded exhausted. ‘Let him in, Sam,’ Rita McGinty said, her hand appearing on her husband’s shoulder. ‘They’re just going to keep coming until we speak to one of them, might as well be him.’

  The door swung shut while the chain was rattled free and then it opened again. It seemed to take forever.

  ‘You’d better come in, then,’ Sam McGinty sighed as he turned round and headed back down the hall.

  Doug didn’t need to be asked twice. He followed them into the house.

  The living room reminded Doug of his grandparents’. The McGintys had the same style of crocheted headrests thrown across the back of their chairs that he had seen his gran make w
hen he was a child. Like his grandparents’ home, the McGintys’ living room was compact and neat, dominated by an open fireplace, which had once been for coal and now contained a gas fire. And, like his grandparents, the McGintys had a small television stashed in the corner of the room, almost an afterthought, while a radio took pride of place in a display cabinet on one wall.

  But, where Doug’s grandparents’ home had been light and airy, with a huge bay window from which a set of flimsy sheer blinds hung, the McGintys’ was dark and gloomy, the light blocked out by heavy curtains drawn tight across the windows. Seeing those curtains, and the gloom of the room, Doug felt a sudden pang of guilt.

  Rita McGinty motioned to the couch. ‘Take a seat, Mr…’

  ‘McGregor, Doug McGregor.’

  Rita nodded slightly, committing the name to memory.

  ‘Well then, can I get you a drink, Mr McGregor?’

  ‘It’s Doug, please. And a coffee would be great if it’s no bother. Black, no sugar.’

  Rita’s lips twisted into a humourless smile. She was a tall, thin woman with a tight, pinched face and eyes that seemed to be everywhere at once. It may have just been the light, but her skin had a greyish, washed out look to it. Again, Doug was reminded of his grandparents. Rita McGinty looked like his gran had after her first stroke.

  ‘Sam, do you want anything?’ she asked.

  ‘No, love, I’m fine,’ Sam said, his tone implying he was anything but. He waited for his wife to disappear into the kitchen, and then leant forward so violently Doug thought he was trying to headbutt him.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he hissed. ‘Can’t you see what this is doing to her? Why can’t you just leave us alone?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Doug said. He hated this part of the job, going where he wasn’t welcome, asking the questions no one wanted to be asked. ‘I’ll be out of your hair as quickly as I can. But I need to know if you can tell me anything about that picture, Mr McGinty, anything you know about your son. You saw him last night, didn’t you?’