Say You're Sorry: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A DCI Campbell McKenzie Detective Conspiracy Thriller No 1)

by IAN C. P. IRVINE

  Since his father had passed away two years ago, - forcing Anand to return to India from Birmingham in England where he was almost about to complete his second year at an English University - Anand had been the main breadwinner: he was now responsible for caring for his two sisters, his little brother and his mother.

  Anand's life was hard, but he never complained about it. He was a full-grown man now, twenty-two, and he felt blessed that he had already seen more of life than many Indians his age ever would.

  England had been a dream. A dream which had come true. For a short while.

  Now though, Anand's life was different and he accepted that, taking on his new duties stoically.

  Anand's father had been a good man, and now Anand would be just like him. He would be a good man too.

  It was a ninety-minute trip from their two room 'flat' to the call centre on the outskirts of Mumbai where he had worked since returning to India.

  At first, he had hated the job: it was boring, mundane, soul destroying. Sitting at a desk for hours on end, all day long, six days a week, answering the telephone and trying to help customers thousands of miles away who he would never see, and never wanted to see.

  As the weeks turned into months, his active mind began to dull over with the reality of his new life, but slowly he began to realise that far from being unlucky to have such a job, compared to others around him in his suburb, he was very, very lucky.

  With his job at the call centre he earned enough to put food on the table for his family, and to buy second-hand clothes from the street stalls and thieves who always wanted to sell their wares.

  Anand accepted that his life would be different now.

  He would have to forget his dreams. Put away the hopes he once had of getting a degree, a good job, and buying a nice, semi-detached house somewhere beside the sea in Great Britain.

  Ideally a house somewhere near his favourite football club, Hibernian, the team from a place called Edinburgh in Scotland.

  He'd never been there or even seen them play apart from on the TV, but when he was a kid living in India, before he was sent to live with his uncle in England, he'd been given a 'Hibs' football strip that his father had bought from a market stall on the street.

  He'd worn it every day until the beautiful green colour had faded away and the top had filled with holes.

  His stay in England had been too short to see them play, and he'd never managed to find the money to catch the train up north to Scotland.

  Anand knew that he should forget his dreams.

  It was the only way he would find peace in his new world.

  He'd got the job in the call centre because of the English accent he had picked up whilst living with his uncle in Birmingham. Shortly after he had arrived back home, a man in the street had overheard Anand talking to his little sister. He was one of the managers in the call centre and was short of staff.

  "Where did you learn to speak like that?" the man had enquired.

  "In England, sir." Anand had replied, politely, as his father and mother had taught him.

  "What were you doing there?"

  Anand had explained. The man had offered him a job. Anand had not been able to say no.

  The biggest problem with life in the call centre was the people he had to sit and work with. He rapidly found out that he had nothing in common with them. They had no interests, were poorly educated, and didn't really try to help the people on the other end of the telephone lines who called into them and asked for assistance.

  The managers in the call centre didn't really seem to care much either.

  Everyone was trained in how to pretend to do their job: they learned how to go through the motions of answering phones and play act as if the company they represented was serious about trying to help their customers. They read from prepared scripts. Learned how to sound sympathetic. Practised how to listen to customers without actually hearing anything they said.

  And mastered the ability to feign indifference so well, that when customers slammed the phones down in frustration and incredulity at the apparent stupidity of those who manned the so-called 'help-lines', they simply smiled and moved rapidly onto the next call. No one cared.

  It was a numbers game. Not a service.

  The call centre in India was part of one of Britain's largest insurance companies. Their job was to answer phones, not to actually help anyone. Call centre managers were paid to hit targets, to ensure that phones were answered within certain times.

  Initially, Anand just thought that the poor service was down to the quality of staff that such low wages could attract. Later, though, he came to realise that there was more to it than that.

  The scripts that people followed when answering the phones, the training they were given, - or lack of it -, was part of the policy his insurance company stuck to.

  It was all part of the grand Insurance Scam Plan: take money year after year from customers who paid their dues, but always, ALWAYS, remember, to find every possible way not to pay anything out, especially when someone turned to them in their hour of need and asked for help.

  The Insurance company motto was simple: 'Take a customer's money. And keep it.'

  Anand knew that if he wanted to keep his job he had to become like them. He had to fit the corporate mould. To become useless at providing any form of service to all the customers in Britain who would depend upon him.

  The calls he took were always so predictable. People with problems expected him to help them. The company, on the other hand, expected him, relied upon him, to be polite, bright, and useless.

  "I'm sorry, sir. But if you read the small print, it quite clearly explains that you're not actually covered for that... I'm so sorry, sir. I totally understand. No, I'm sorry. That's not our department. Would you like me to put you through, sir? Okay, thank you. I'll just transfer you. Thank you for calling Swiss Cheese Insurance, insurance contracts which stink and are so full of holes they're worthless to anyone. Especially those who need help. I hope I have been of service today. Bye bye!"

  Anand did not want to be like the rest of them. He wasn't like the rest of them. But slowly, step by step, day by day, week by week, he did start to become like them.

  He got used to people with real problems shouting down the phone at him. Hanging up. Being abusive. This was thanks to the only real training the company provided, which taught them how to ignore the feelings of customers, and rise above it all. To keep smiling no matter how many times a customer shouted, or Anand had to say no, and apologise.

  "I'm sorry, sir. Unfortunately, thanks to the damage done by the stone as it chipped your wing-mirror, the value of your family car which you have so lovingly looked after for the past twenty years is now less than the cost of repairing the car. We've had to write it off... I'm sorry... sir, it's on our system now as an economic write-off... which means that you can no longer legally drive it on the roads as it is... Please don't cry. I am so sorry... I hope I have been of service to you today."

  Anand rapidly came to learn that the whole car insurance industry was a scam. A large, money-making, corporate crime perpetuated by corporations and powers that spanned the world.

  In his mind, he tried to fight back. He tried not to conform. He tried to do a good job.

  Slowly however, day by day, he became excellent at what he did.

  He became totally, utterly, useless.

  Within a few months he was successfully not helping anyone and saving his insurance company a fortune.

  Chapter 4

  Edinburgh

  Beneath Salisbury Crags

  Tuesday 11.35 p.m.

  DCI Campbell McKenzie stopped at the bottom of the Cat's Nick, surveying the lights of the city flickering beneath him. He loved this view. He came here often by himself, or with his wife, walking round the Radical Road - a gravel path that ran from the beginning of the Crags and followed their contours at the base of the cliffs as they rose higher and higher until they towered above the city bene
ath, before slowly returning downwards into the base of Arthur's Seat, the large mountain that dominated the centre of Edinburgh.

  This was one of his special places. Somewhere that he came to think, to literally rise above the murk and violence of the beautiful city that he loved, but whose darkside he knew more than most, and was exposed to on an almost daily basis.

  One of the attractions of that same Edinburgh, however, was that unlike most other modern cities, the underworld and depravity that pervaded its shadows was never obvious or really threatening to the general populace.

  People in Edinburgh who lived decent moral existences, could spend their entire lives without really seeing anything bad, being exposed to the drug culture or being robbed or mugged. This was unlike other 'great' British Cities he had worked in, where crime, violence and drugs were in your face, on the streets and visible to everyone, all the time.

  Edinburgh was a haven. A harbour where he had long ago decided to spend his life, and which he had vowed to defend and protect through his work to the best of his ability.

  For Campbell, the walk below the Crags was one of his three favourite places in the city. The others were firstly the view from the Castle down over the city below and extending over to the Firth of Forth, the river estuary that separated the county of Lothian from the Kingdom of Fife. His third favourite 'special' place was the walk from the centre of Edinburgh down the side of the Water of Leith through the city down to the sea. The river ran through a gorge that few knew existed, the buses and cars passing obliviously over a bridge above the river that coursed by invisibly beneath. Whenever Campbell left the main street above and descended the flight of steps down underneath the bridge and into the gorge, within seconds he was surrounded by green and tall trees and a river that gurgled and splashed, the city above left far behind. It was another world: empty and peaceful and just seconds from the hustle and bustle of urban Edinburgh.

  Special places. Places where the filth and the violence didn't reach.

  Until now.

  "So, do we know his name?" Campbell asked the young DI standing beside him, without turning to face her.

  "Yes. I'm sorry, but he's one of us. I don't know if you know him or not, but I've met him before. He's Keith Urqhart. A Police Constable from Costorphine."

  Campbell McKenzie turned and stared across towards the body of the man who had been found just thirty minutes before by someone out walking their dog. The dog had run ahead, disappeared over the side of the path and scrambled down the slope into some whinny bushes, barking wildly.

  Knowing something was up from the way his dog was barking, the owner had made his way gingerly down the scree and investigated what the dog had found.

  The local police were on the scene within minutes, and Campbell McKenzie himself had only just arrived.

  Only five minutes later and he would have been heading out of the station on his way home after another very long day. He'd been looking forward to putting his feet up and reading another few chapters of his latest book, but just as he was shutting up shop, one of his officers had stepped into this office.

  "A body's been found below the Crags, sir. You've been requested..."

  Campbell stepped over the edge of the Radical Road and grabbing hold of the odd, sparse tuft of grass which poked its way through the scree, he made his way slowly down the side of the hill to the others who were busy cordoning off an area around the body and getting ready to put up a tent so the forensic boys and girls could work in peace.

  A few lights had already been erected and were flooding the area with powerful mock-sunlight, revealing the scene in perhaps a little too much detail.

  The man was lying on his side, his face half-buried in the scree, his arms and legs lying at odd angles to his torso, and blood soaking all his clothes and the small stones around him.

  One of the officers came up alongside Campbell and offered him a black-leather wallet.

  Campbell quickly put on a pair of plastic gloves and took the wallet. He flicked it open, examining the contents.

  As he looked through it, he started to ask questions.

  "Time of death? Any idea?"

  "Too early to tell exactly sir, but judging by the state of the body and the blood, I'd say this happened sometime in the past twenty-four to forty-eight hours. His wife reported him missing early this morning. He never went home last night and didn't turn up in the morning, and he wasn't answering his phone. She'd called the station, and he hadn't reported for duty today either."

  "What station is he in again?"

  "Costorphine, sir."

  "Did anyone know any reason why he should be here? Was he working on anything of special significance?"

  "We haven't really had a chance to talk to anyone about it yet, sir. We've only just discovered the body..."

  "I know, sorry. What's your name?"

  "Collins, sir."

  "Okay, thank you. I know it's early days, but has anyone got any ideas what happened?" he asked, turning towards the dark shadow of the Crags above.

  "It's the Cat's Nick, sir." Collins said, following his gaze. "We're directly below the highest point of the Crags. I'd say he probably jumped."

  "Or was pushed..." Campbell replied.

  For a second, both men stared up at the top of the cliff, their minds beginning to imagine what happened in the last few seconds of Keith Urqhart's life.

  Campbell shook his head and shivered.

  Turning back towards the corpse, Campbell knelt down to get a closer look at the man's face.

  Although he never said anything to Collins, he recognised the man.

  The last time he had seen his face, it was in a recent photograph, captured talking to Tommy McNunn.

  Campbell didn't believe in coincidences and never had.

  Right now, Campbell didn't know exactly how Urqhart's body had ended up where it was, - although the cause of death seemed apparent - but already his instinct told him one thing for sure: this wasn't a straight-forward suicide. Visualising the photograph once more, his gut told him one more important fact. Somewhere, somehow, Tommy McNunn was involved.

  The only question was, how, and why?

  Chapter 5

  Edinburgh

  Portobello

  Wednesday 2 p.m.

  Jonathan Stuart sat in the lounge of the house in his favourite chair. He was looking out to sea, enjoying the incredible view of the Firth of Forth which he had from his window.

  His house was set back from the promenade, shielded from the joggers and tourists by a ten metre stretch of grass running from his building to the large fence at the bottom of his garden.

  It had been his wife's idea to turn the room on the first floor at the back of the house into the lounge. From here they could see everything that was happening on Portobello Beach, and right across the bay to Dunbar on the right-hand side, or the Kingdom of Fife on the left.

  A few years ago, when Sally was still alive, she used to point to the two thin chimneys of the decommissioned Cockenzie Power station that had reached up tall into the sky, and would complain of their existence.

  "They're a blot on the landscape. They should be blown up and removed! They absolutely ruin the panoramic sweep of the landscape. If only someone would see sense and get rid of them!"

  Well, eventually someone had. Now they were gone. And so was Sally. Every time that Jonathan looked across at the bay he felt emptiness: he actually missed the chimneys now they were gone, and he missed the sound of Sally's voice complaining they were there.

  If she was still alive now, would she miss them too? Or would she be glad that someone had 'seen sense' and got rid of them?

  In the hall the clock chimed twice, the sound of the gong being struck reverberating through the empty house and momentarily bringing Jonathan back into the room.

  Almost without thinking, he looked at the watch on his wrist, the fingers of his right hand reaching across and curling around the winding mechanism. He looked down at
the watch face and adjusted the hands minutely: the watch was old, it needed repairing, and was continually losing time.

  Jonathan didn't mind though. Having to adjust the watch every hour gave him something to do.

  There was another boat on the horizon now. A large one. Probably another oil-tanker. That made six of them at anchor, all waiting in the bay for the right moment to disgorge their cargo at Grangemouth, just as soon as the price of oil went up a few cents more.

  Jonathan picked up the binoculars and focussed on the ship. He had not seen that one before. Reaching for his logbook and jotted a few notes down on the page.

  When he was younger, when his life was fuller, he had always found it difficult to understand the mentality of trainspotters or plane-spotters, but now... now he had nothing else worthwhile to fill his own life, oil-tanker spotting had become his big thing. His only thing.

  Jonathan Stuart had nothing else to do, really, apart from sit there each day and survey the bay, hour after hour. His kingdom.

  The phone was ringing.

  Slowly Jonathan rose from his chair, coughed raucously a few times and took the few steps across the room towards the table on which the phone sat.

  As usual he never made it in time, but after standing patiently for a minute or two, perhaps five, he saw the little red light start to blink on the top right corner of the phone, signifying that someone had left a message.

  It was the surgery.

  Apologising.

  Unfortunately, the consultant that Doctor Mitchell had wanted him to see was very busy and the earliest appointment that could be arranged for Jonathan was for tomorrow at five o'clock.