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

by IAN C. P. IRVINE

  "I'm not." McNunn replied monotonically.

  Pulling out his phone he called his wife. When she heard the news, she burst into tears. "Why are we leaving?" she asked.

  "We're not!" McNunn replied. Obviously, she had known nothing about it either.

  Next, McNunn called the number of the solicitor advertised on the board, who was handling the sale. McNunn gave him the address and started to ask some questions, trying his best to keep his lid on.

  "Hi, could you tell me please... How long has the house been on sale for?"

  "Aha, yes, it's a beautiful house. We just put the sign up this morning, so you're only the fifth person to show an interest in it. I have to warn you though we have an offer already."

  "You already have an offer? How come I haven't heard anything about it then?" Tommy asked, rage beginning to creep into his voice.

  "Why should you? You haven't noted an interest in the house already have you?"

  "No. You see, it's my house. I own it!"

  There was a moment of hesitancy at the other end, followed by a rapid apology.

  "Oh, I'm sorry... Mr Burns? Mr Andrew Burns? We haven't talked before. I didn't know it was you..."

  "What did you just say? Andrew Burns? What the hell do you mean, Andrew Burns?"

  "I don't understand. You said you were the owner, and my records and my instructions say that you, ...sorry... Mr Andrew Burns is the owner of Glendale House. We are talking about Glendale House, aren't we?"

  "Yes, we bloody are. Except Glendale House is MY house, not my accountants. I think you've made a terrible mistake. Burns is my accountant..."

  "And the legal owner of the house. I'm a solicitor and I always run a preliminary check with the Registers of Scotland to ensure that I'm dealing with the lawful owners. In this case, since the instruction to sell was done by email, I confirmed with the registry office that you,... I mean, Mr Burns, is the legal owner of Glendale, and according to the records, you....Mr Burns?... has been for the past five years... since it was sold to him by... hang on a second... yep, here it is....since it was sold to him by Mr Tommy McNunn."

  "What the FUCK are you talking about? I'm Mr Tommy McNunn and I NEVER sold my house to my accountant. I should bloody know!"

  "Mr McNunn? I don't understand..." There was a pause, and Tommy could hear the solicitor at the other end of the phone thinking quickly. "Sorry, sir, may I ask, are you the same Mr Tommy McNunn who is the proprietor of Misty's, Annabell's and the Casino's in Costorphine and Leith?"

  "Yes, that's me."

  "Oh dear. Oh dear... I'm sorry, Mr McNunn. Listen, my apologies, but I have to go...I've got to go and meet a client. I'm late for a meeting." He paused again. "Mr McNunn? Please, could I ask you to talk to Mr Burns as soon as you can? I don't know what is going on here, but we do have a lot of interest on the house, including the offer which is at the asking price..."

  "It's not Burns's house to sell. It's mine!"

  "But according to the computer it is! The document I got a copy of from the Registers of Scotland states very clearly that you are no longer the owner and you haven't been for a long time... And to be honest, that's what counts. According to the law and the Scottish Land Registry, you're not the legal owner of Glendale House. Mr Andrew Burns is."

  "FUCKKKKK!!!!!" Tommy replied at the top of his voice, seconds before their call was disconnected when his phone hit the ground at thirty miles an hour and was stamped upon by Tommy's right foot.

  -------------------------

  It took a full fifteen minutes for the rage to subside enough to the level where Tommy could experience any form of rational thought.

  Although what little thought he could muster struggled to make any logical sense.

  How was all this possible?

  First his car, then his bank accounts, all his money,... his clubs, cars, insurance, water, electricity,... and now his house!

  It had all been taken from him.

  According to everyone else, no matter how much he argued with them, the 'computer' always said 'No!'.

  "No!" you don't have any money left.

  "No!" you've never had an account with us.

  "No!" your house no longer belongs to you.

  No. No. No.

  And if the computer said 'No', you were...fucked!

  How was the little old man doing all this? Was he some sort of cyber genius?

  Tommy stormed up to his front door and pulled out his keys.

  Luckily, incredibly, wonderfully, the lock recognized the key and let him in.

  He stormed inside, up the stairs to his office and began to ransack his desk, and the piles of paper he'd left there. It took him twenty minutes but eventually he found it: the piece of paper with the old man's telephone number written on it.

  His hands shaking with rage, he took one of the new phones from his men, that he'd insisted they buy for him and carry around with them in case of emergencies like these, and he inserted the SIM card which they had recovered from the wreckage of the last phone.

  Almost as soon as it was powered up and ready to go, the phone vibrated and the screen went white. Then just as suddenly a message took over the whole screen.

  "Say you're sorry!"

  Tommy stared at the message, incredulous at its timing.

  As soon as the message boxes appeared underneath the words he clicked on the one on the right that said 'I'm sorry. Please forgive me.'

  Tommy wasn't sorry. Far from it. He was just livid, and he wanted to find out what the hell happened when he clicked on the message on the right. Would it give a clue as to who was behind this? Would it put him in contact with the bastard behind all of this?

  The screen on his smartphone went blank again, and then a second later, it loaded another picture.

  It was a picture of him, on a webpage.

  Tommy recognised it immediately.

  It was the same photograph which was on his driving licence.

  Underneath the picture there was a paragraph of words.

  Tommy devoured them quickly.

  It was a statement.

  A ridiculous, ludicrous, outrageous statement.

  "On Wednesday 7th October, I, Tommy McNunn, did recklessly drive my big fancy car into the back of the car being driven by Mr Jonathan Stuart. At the time, I was driving dangerously, did not see that Mr Stuart had stopped at the lights, and not realising that he had stopped, drove into the back of his car with some force.

  The accident was my fault. I was fully to blame.

  However, following the incident, I proceeded to blame the accident on Mr Stuart.

  I lied.

  I lied to the police. To the insurance company. To Mr Stuart. And to myself.

  Despite Mr Stuart being elderly and infirm, I blamed it all on him, causing him massive amounts of stress.

  I have since realised that I am a shit.

  I am a liar.

  I am scum.

  All Mr Stuart wanted was an apology.

  Instead I gave him grief.

  I repeat, I'm a liar, and I'm the lowest form of scum you could ever imagine.

  Mr Stuart, wherever you are, I want the world to know that I have now learned the error of my ways.

  I admit that you were right. The accident was my fault.

  I want to say to you 'I am sorry! Please, please forgive me and accept my apology!

  Yours, honestly.

  Mr Thomas McNunn."

  Underneath the picture and the text of the website there were two orange option boxes.

  The one on the right said,

  "I'm sorry. Publish this website and let the whole world know!"

  The one on the left said,

  "I'm not sorry.

  And because I am a liar and I deserve it,

  I accept everything that will happen to me now."

  Tommy stared at the words, dumbfounded.

  His two bodyguards were staring at him. To them looking on, it looked as if a volcano was building within To
mmy, priming itself for an explosion.

  His face was turning steadily redder and redder, and his body was beginning to shake, the muscles in his jaw rippling violently as he gritted his teeth harder and harder.

  "Boss?" the smaller man asked. "Are you alright? Please, don't destroy the phone. We only have one left..."

  Tommy turned to look at him.

  "What?"

  "Boss, don't destroy your new phone. We need it!"

  Tommy looked back at the phone in his hands, the knuckles of his hand showing white through the tension of gripping it so hard.

  Tommy took several very long, very deep breaths.

  Then slowly but very deliberately he dialled the number of the old man, Mr Jonathan Stuart.

  The phone rang several times, then Tommy noticed a change of tone and it carried on ringing again.

  "Hello?" a voice answered. It sounded strangely familiar.

  "Hello, who is this?" Tommy demanded.

  "Donald Donaldson, I'm a solicitor from the firm of Donald Donaldson & Sons."

  "Did I just speak to you about my house? Glendale?"

  "Mr Burns?"

  "No, McNUNN, TOMMY McNUNN!"

  "Yes, it's me again. I'm the solicitor handling the sale."

  "I don't understand, I just dialled the number for Jonathan Stuart! How come I've got hold of you again? What the hell is going on?"

  "Mr Jonathan Stuart? Aha... Did you just ring his home number?"

  "YES!"

  "Then you were probably forwarded to me by his phone. I set up an automatic redirect on the phone at his house. May I ask, why were you trying to call him?"

  "Because I wanted to bloody speak to him! His car crashed into mine about a month ago. He wrote his number down on a piece of paper and I was calling it now..."

  "Why?"

  "What has it got to do with you?"

  "Actually, may I ask, was it to do with the accident? Or the damage to your car?"

  "What car? It's been crushed because I didn't pay any tax on it!"

  "Oh dear..."

  "I mean I did pay the tax, but the DVLA said I hadn't... Anyway, that's got nothing to do with it. I need to speak to the old man, Mr Stuart. Why is his phone forwarded to you?"

  "Because I have been appointed his Executor and I'm trying to find out who needs to be informed or who was doing any business with him that may need to know..."

  "Know what?"

  "Mr McNunn, I'm sorry to inform you, but Mr Stuart is dead. He died..."

  "When?"

  "About a month ago. Actually, now I remember it. He did write something down about you in his notes... something about... yes, I remember now, something about wanting to get you to say you were sorry, even if it was the last thing he did! Does that make any sense to you?"

  "Shit. Make me say I'm sorry? But how can he be dead? He's been sending me the messages for the past few weeks... demanding to make me sorry. He's the one who is responsible for..."

  "Mr McNunn, I'm sorry, but did you hear me? He's dead. For quite a while now. He won't have been sending you any messages. I don't see how he can have...Are you sure...?"

  Feeling suddenly quite dizzy and nauseous, Tommy dropped the phone onto the table and ran to the toilet, bending double and throwing up several times.

  For the first time in a long time, he began to feel really scared.

  None of this made any sense.

  None of it at all.

  Wiping his mouth, he stood up, pressed the handle and tried to flush the toilet.

  "FUCKKKKKK!" he shouted again at the top of his voice.

  There was no water.

  Chapter 40

  St Leonards Police Station

  Edinburgh

  Thursday

  Later that day

  DCI McKenzie’s Office

  4.30 p.m. G.M.T.

  DCI McKenzie stared incredulously at the CID officer who had laid out all the photographs on the table in front of him.

  It was almost too much to take in, and McKenzie was struggling. At one point he had felt dizzy, and he had had to shake his head to clear it and force himself to focus.

  Unfortunately, when the world had settled again, the facts had not changed.

  That which seemed too incredible to believe was seemingly still the truth.

  The CID officer had started the conversation with a monotonic report of Operation Gumbo, a surveillance activity which McKenzie himself had requested a few months before.

  The object of the mission was to follow Tommy McNunn at random and see what intelligence they could learn from monitoring him at a distance. Their hope was to establish a pattern of life for McNunn. To learn about his activities in more detail. To discover his contacts. Establish more information about his businesses.

  Ultimately, however, the goal was to dig up some dirt or evidence which could lead to his prosecution.

  Unfortunately, resource limitation had meant that only one officer had been assigned to the task, and the role was to be shared with his other day-to-day activities. This meant that any surveillance which was undertaken was truly random.

  Sadly, the CID Officer had not been following him on the night that Urqhart had died. Likewise, he was not following McNunn the weekend his two men had been turned to toast.

  In fact, it seemed that in total, the officer had only spent a total of fifty hours trying to tail McNunn. During that time, the officer, Barry Deehan, had spent most of his time sitting in a car, waiting for McNunn to go into or come back out of buildings, with precious little idea as to what was actually going on inside them.

  McKenzie had started to get angry.

  He had kept this work secret from the rest of his team and not told them about it, hoping that it would result in a pleasant surprise for them all. The hope was that it would help them to pull an ace out from up McKenzie's sleeve. Sadly, as Deehan plodded methodically through his report detailing exactly what he had actually done when he did actually do anything, it was becoming increasingly clear that the operation had been a waste of time. In fact, if McKenzie had known just how little time was actually being spent on it, he would have cancelled the whole thing ages ago.

  Until, that is, Deehan produced the last brown envelope and started to pull out a new set of photographs.

  "These photographs were taken only a few weeks ago. I observed McNunn go into a hotel. I followed him in at a distance and was able to learn from the receptionist which room he was in. I waited in the reception and secretly photographed everyone who then came into the hotel over the next hour."

  Deehan then paused, and slowly placed a photograph of a woman in front of McKenzie, on top of all the other photographs that were already there.

  McKenzie stared at the picture, his heart skipping a beat, the world dropping out from under him as he listened to what Deehan said next.

  "I was sure I recognised her, but couldn't place where. I watched her get into the lift, and I quickly followed her into it, before the doors closed. The hotel only had two floors, so when she got out on the first floor I followed her out. I walked ahead of her towards the far end of the corridor, and she walked slowly behind me. I never turned around to look at her, but as she passed the room that I knew McNunn was in, I heard her footsteps stop, a sequence of gentle knocks, and then a door open. I carried on walking, then stopped and turned a few seconds later as if I was going to go into a room. When I looked back down the corridor, she was gone. I hurried back down the corridor, placed my ear against McNunn's door and heard voices. Laughing. A man and a woman. Then I left."

  For McKenzie, the world was beginning to spin.

  "I caught the lift back down to the ground floor, got a coffee at the bar and read a paper. Very slowly. But keeping an eye on the lift the whole time."

  Deehan was watching McKenzie's reaction as he spoke, pacing his words according to how he responded to each part of the report.

  "About an hour later, I saw the woman leave. I took this photograph. As you can se
e, " Deehan pointed out, "in this blown up version, she appears to no longer be wearing so much make up. And her hair is rather dishevelled."

  He paused.

  "Then ten minutes later I saw McNunn leave. He didn't have any bodyguards. He was alone."

  Deehan paused again.

  "For a long time, I couldn't remember who the woman was, but it really began to bug me. I was sure I had seen her before sometime. Then yesterday, she walked past my office in Costorphine. She's a police officer. She's a DI and I think she works for you..."

  McKenzie swallowed hard.

  He nodded. Not saying anything.

  Indeed, he did know the woman.

  In fact, within the past twenty-four hours he had committed adultery with her.

  -------------------------

  Glendale House

  Tommy McNunn’s House

  Thursday

  4.40 p.m. G.M.T.

  For someone who had always struggled with his temper, the ability Tommy had somehow exercised in the past ten minutes to speak to several different people in the land registry office without swearing at them profusely had been nothing short of a miracle.

  However, as with all things in life, there was always a limit, and in this instance Tommy reached it after eleven minutes whilst in conversation with a senior officer who was unlucky enough to be the third person to whom Tommy had been transferred.

  In no uncertain terms, Tommy had begun to question the person’s parentage, as well as questioning how it was possible for such an idiot as she obviously was, to ever get such an important job.

  And with regard to Tommy's house, obviously a mistake had been made somewhere, and any fool should be able to spot that.

  To the credit of the young woman on other end of the phone in the office of the Registry of Scotland, she had refused to lower herself to his level.

  “Mr McNunn, there's no doubt or question in my mind over the ownership of Glendale House. All the digital records we have confirm that it was sold by yourself to the current owner, a Mr Andrew Burns. Although we could manually search through all the paper records, which would take about a week, I'm absolutely sure that the digital records are correct and would confirm what I can see now. If you can't remember making the sale, then I suggest that you either talk to your solicitor, or your doctor. Alternatively, you could talk to the owner Mr Burns, or perhaps even go and discuss the matter with the police. From our side, however, all the digital records show me that Mr Andrew Burns is the owner of Glendale. You are not.”