by Denise Mina
He nudged her with his fat elbow as they drove down Bath Street. ‘What d’you think? Charles: what’ll he be feeling?’
‘Dunno.’ She had to say something. ‘Gutted?’
‘Nah.’ He smiled as he took a turn at some lights. ‘Not gutted. He’s free to marry that other one now.’
He gibbered on about it, about the Queen and Prince Charles. Rose tuned out. She didn’t know about politics. She was so deep-down tired that she forgot Pinkie Brown. All she could remember was that she was dead and there was blood. Death filled her consciousness like an ache.
They were drawing up into the mouth of Turnberry Avenue. She reached down to absent-mindedly scratch away an itch from her ankle. As dampness registered on her fingertips she remembered: it was itchy because it was covered in Pinkie Brown’s blood and she had killed him. She froze, bent double, her fingers touching the car floor like a sprinter on the blocks.
The kids’ home was in a big Victorian villa at the heart of the posh West End. Sammy’s eyes flicked around the street, checking for staff or witnesses.
‘Good girl,’ he said, seeing her bent down, thinking she was hiding for him.
He parked two hundred yards further up the road, in the deep shadow under a big old tree. A branch sagged down in front of them under the weight of leaves, heavy, swaying, leaves flipping over and back in the breeze, silver, black. Orange street lights winked through but dawn was already bleeding into the night. Rose stayed down.
Sammy was chatting away now, she thought he’d had a smoke or something while he was out of the car.
He said, ‘One day you’ll grow out of me, hen, you know? You’ll move on in your young life, but I hope you’ll remember me kindly. I think the world of you, you know.’
He waited for the responsorial lie – I’ll never move on from you, Sammy, you’re the only one in the world who gives a fuck about me – but Rose didn’t say anything. She was thinking about air and kicking air and felt that same urge rise up in her.
Her eye fell on the posh flats outside, dark with curtains drawn. Sleeping in those flats were lawyers and students and dentists, refreshing themselves with warm, comfy sleeps. They’d wake up in a few hours, have calm breakfasts and then settle into Sunday. They’d get dressed and start writing letters to the council, complaining about the children’s home bringing down property prices.
‘What do you want for yourself, Rose?’ he said, repeating the tone, changing the sentiment. ‘From life, what do you want?’ And then he pulled on the handbrake as if he was planning to settle in for a long conversation.
‘Dough,’ she told the floor. She couldn’t get up. He’d see the blood.
‘Well, you’re going the right way about that, hen.’ He laughed softly. ‘What ye doing down there?’ He was looking at her now, his big stupid face kind of gawping.
What was she doing down here? The question howled through her. What was she doing all the way down here? Why was she all the way down here? The injustice of it struck her so suddenly and completely that she had to blink to warm her eyes. Why were other girls asleep? Why were they wearing ironed clothes and worried about the size of their thighs and learning piano and painting their fingernails and she was down here?
Rose looked back at him, her fingers creeping up her leg, drawing the jeans up with them until she felt the gaffer tape.
‘You’re in a strange mood – what’s down there—’
She bolted up against the air, swung the knife at his neck, in and out. She’d kicked and now she shut her eyes, curled up knees to chin, cowering into the passenger door.
Wet gasps and thrashing. Rain in the car. Sammy kicking, feet scrabbling against the pedals. He grabbed her hair and yanked her down to the side.
Slowly, his fingers relented, slid down her wet arm and disappeared. Rose waited as the thrashing slowed. Like her mum, Sammy’s legs were the last thing to still. The only sound in the car was a wet gurgle.
Sammy deflated, wilting onto the steering wheel, and the horn eased out a long droning blare.
Rose couldn’t hide indoors, she was covered in blood.
She couldn’t run away. When the police found the body of Sammy the Perv the first place they’d look was the children’s home; the first thing they’d notice was that she was missing. Even if she got away from the police the men would find her.
She’d never get away.
She opened her eyes and looked out of a window filigreed with blood, deaf to the skirl of the horn.
Outside the car lights burst on in flats. Curtains drew back. Angry faces looking for the car horn ripping their Sunday morning. Rose watched the street lights deferring to the dawn, flicking off, one by one.
She sat inside the bloody car and waited for the police to come.
2
Alex Morrow hated feeling this nervous. She hated it. A chair scraped the floor beyond the door and her stomach sent up an acid distress signal. She ground her teeth until they hurt, angry with herself. She knew her nerves were caused by public speaking and seeing Michael Brown again but knowing didn’t seem to help. Deep breathing didn’t help. Eating bananas and avoiding coffee hadn’t helped. She hated this.
The witness waiting room was dull. The walls were lined with yellow pine, the carpet navy blue. Six chairs, in matching pine and navy blue fabric, and a low table with some magazines no one would ever read. An empty water cooler gathered dust in the corner. Morrow imagined an anxious witness, waiting, taking drink after drink from the cooler to moisten a dry mouth and then needing the toilet as soon as they stepped into the witness box. Morrow’s mouth was dry too. She chewed her tongue.
Usually when she felt like this it would make her wonder why she put herself through it, but not today. She’d happily sit here, heart hammering, every day for a year if it meant a longer sentence for Michael Brown. She never wanted to have to interview that bastard again. He threatened her during interviews. He threatened Brian during interviews. He said he knew of paedophile rings who’d pay for the use of her children. He’d chanted her home address, goaded her about her sex life, he even tried to expose himself to her.
At first Morrow considered handing the interviews over to someone else. She was getting angry, felt soiled. But as they went on, as his pallor changed to prison white, as he lost weight and started wearing prison-issue clothes, she began to see him for what he was: a lifer in his death throes. He was out on licence when they arrested him. He’d been done for murdering his older brother, Pinkie, when he was just a kid. When word got out that he’d been loaning semi-automatic guns to junkies, there would be a suspicion that he wanted to get caught and sent back, that he just couldn’t cut it outside. The rest of his life would be shit if they believed that of him so he had to put on a good show, resist the firm hand as hard as possible. It was the lifer equivalent of final exams and Morrow wasn’t the audience, she was a prop.
They knew what the finale was going to be: Michael Brown would try to escape from this court. His Dutch lawyer had just commissioned a refurbishment of Brown’s villa in northern Cyprus. If he did manage to get there, she was sure, he would absent-mindedly come back to Glasgow for something and get done then. They didn’t know how, but they knew he was planning to abscond. A leap over the wall to the public gallery was a possibility.
She leaned back in her chair and thought her way through the security arrangements: a van of officers at the front and back of the court. Extra security staff downstairs. CCTV on every exit and a closed court. Two armed officers putting on a show in the lobby. The jury were sequestered for the full trial, kept in a hotel with heavy security. It was costing a fortune and there was to be no press coverage. Journalists would be allowed in, but only to make notes for later. It was easier than saying no, but effectively the same.
The door to the court snapped open and Morrow jumped in her seat. The macer, the court usher, looked in. She was slight, swamped by her black gown, dirty blond hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looked hassled and
tired.
‘DI Alex Morrow.’
The macer disappeared down the steps and Morrow heard a silence fall in the courtroom beyond. Everyone in the court would be watching the doorway and every second’s delay gave her a bigger build-up.
Morrow stood up, carrying her briefcase, wishing it wasn’t so big. She couldn’t leave it in the witness waiting room or in the car. It had her laptop in it and losing those files was a sackable offence. She had to take it with her but it looked as if she was going on a short holiday.
Through the door, down five steps and into the well of the court.
Wrong shoes. Her solid heels sounded like a slow handclap on the wooden floor. Michael Brown was staring at her; she could see his outline from the corner of her eye. She felt, again, intense discomfort at his presence and tiptoed up to the witness box. She kept her eyes on the well of the court as she bent to tuck her briefcase against the side of the dock.
Standing up, she looked around the room. The jury were already a comfortably coherent group, had notebooks and pens out. A roll of mints was being surreptitiously passed along the back row.
Everyone official looked to the noter, sitting just below the judge. He nodded to all that the recording equipment was working and they could start.
Drawing a breath, the judge led Morrow in the oath. She had said it a hundred times. She followed the prompts fluidly, taking in the room in her peripheral vision.
Michael Brown was sitting in the dock, staring at her, trying to catch her eye. It was important not to look back. None of her testimony should look personal and Brown made her so uncomfortable that it might register on her face. The jury would see that she was afraid of him. They might suspect that it had coloured the case against him. It hadn’t. The case was good, she knew that.
Most cops at her level knew to just hope for the best and expect the worst but Morrow was too deep into it: she wanted Brown to get a long sentence. She was surprised to see a journalist there, in the press seats which were provided with a flip-down table. He looked real too, not a camouflage-trousered crimezine journalist, but wearing a shirt and a jacket. She couldn’t imagine why he was there as he couldn’t print any of it.
Oath done, James Finchley, the prosecuting counsel, stood up and went over to the podium next to the jury. Taking his time, Finchley opened his manila folder, looked through two sheets of paper, turned a page over, making them wait.
Finchley was short and priggish. His black gown always looked pressed, his wig freshly powdered, his diction clipped. Morrow knew that out of court he was warmer than he seemed in court. He was thorough but dull to watch.
Anton Atholl for the defence was quite a different man. Atholl was a minor celebrity and an earl, but people liked him because he didn’t use his title. Exploiting his flair for drama and loopholes, he gave angry interviews to the local news, drank prodigious amounts and wore his wavy grey hair too long. He would certainly appeal when Brown was found guilty. That’s why Prosecutor Fiscal put Finchley up for the prosecution: thorough but dull.
Today Atholl seemed to have dressed himself while spinning around; everything was slightly askew: his wig, his gown, the papers in his file. Clever, thought Morrow. Atholl was the only interesting thing to look at in the room. He was contrasting himself with Finchley. Even she was looking at him.
Finchley looked up from his folder, asked Morrow to say her name, which station she worked at and detail her length of service. He asked the questions in lawyerese, curt and wordy at the same time, conventions of a profession which valued precision but billed by the hour.
And on that day in May, at what time precisely, could she say, was the warrant for a search of the premises executed, exactly?
Morrow said that they knocked on the door at seven thirty-five a.m. Some of the jury members glanced over at Brown, sitting in the dock. They were wondering if he would be up at that time, what sort of pyjamas he wore, maybe, trying to picture the scene.
Brown watched her from the witness box and her eye flicked over him. He looked grey, not at all the suntanned bully they’d spent hour after hour questioning. But he’d already had four months in custody and was flanked by two burly security guards who had been outside enjoying the summer.
Too late, after her eye had left him, Brown tried to sneer. He glanced over at her now, trying to make eye contact, almost pleading with her to look back. Morrow kept her eyes on Finchley.
Finchley moved on to a series of questions about the search of Brown’s home: on that date how many officers did she have with her? Seven other officers. Were some of those officers from the armed division? They were. Why were those officers there? It was suspected that Mr Brown had firearms in his house.
She remembered the house vividly: a brand new suburban four bedroom with en suite this, en suite that. It was on a luxe estate in a shit area. Brown was living in one half of one bedroom, everything else in the house was untouched. He had kitted his living space out exactly like a Shotts prison cell: TV and single bed, small wardrobe, a table and chair. Brown grew up in prison. He’d only been out on licence for three or four years.
Was Mr Brown helpful during the search? Not at all, he refused to unlock the padlocked rooms and physically tried to restrain two officers. Did they find arms in Mr Brown’s house? Not in the house but they were found buried in grounds behind the house.
Was there proof that Mr Brown knew they were there? They had his fingerprints on them. And they were in his garden? Yes, she said. They were in his garden.
Atholl smirked and scribbled on his notes. He knew she and Finchley were playing a game, implying that Brown knew. Possession of a gun, even without knowledge, now carried a mandatory five-year minimum. A postman with a parcel containing a gun could get five years. But guns buried in the garden didn’t count as possession. Brown burying them in the garden was a response to cases the ink was barely dry on. Someone was carefully keeping abreast of the case law and she didn’t think it was Brown.
Finchley moved it on: what else did they find, therein? A lot of money, shrink-wrapped. Why was that significant? It suggested that the money was about to be—
‘Objection.’ Atholl was on his feet, muttering about conjecture.
Fine. How much money? Half a million in twenty-pound notes. What else did they find that was of interest to the police? Forty iPhones, still in their boxes. Where did they come from? They had been legitimately bought in a number of shops. Each had a receipt sellotaped to it.
Atholl was on his feet again: if the iPhones had been legitimately bought they could not be said to be ‘of interest to the police’. He was wrong, and he knew it, but Finchley conceded. The Crown would have to present another case if they went into the iPhones, a complex case they knew about but had no evidence of.
Drugs money was moved out of the UK through international networks called hundi. A Scottish heroin dealer could visit a hundi man in Scotland and deliver three-quarters of a million pounds in cash. Within a few hours, or even less, the equivalent in Pakistani rupees would be delivered by the hundi contact, often via motorcycle courier to a dealer in Lahore. It was not always drugs transactions, though – sometimes perfectly innocent informal transfers of cash by people with no bank account or faith in conventional banking. But the innocent and the criminal were indistinguishable because the hundi networks had become so complex and fragmented: the cashier was now separate from the hundi man in Pakistan, debt enforcers were separate again and hardly knew who they were working for. Brown was one of many pawns and over the course of their interviews Morrow had become convinced that he knew nothing about who or what he was involved with. Someone knew though, and some lawyer was giving up-to-the-minute legal advice about guns and boundaries, about buying iPhones and sellotaping the receipts to them.
They knew that the forty iPhones would be sent to Pakistan as an end-of-the-quarter settling up between the two hundi contacts. They all knew Brown was the fall guy, the cannon fodder, holding the phones and guns. Only a disp
osable foot soldier ever held the guns. But they had no evidence and Brown had no interest in helping them lift the veil between the lawyers and the clients. He needed the bad-boy credit points for his triumphant return to prison.
Finchley looked slowly through his file and Morrow shuffled on her feet. She didn’t like being on someone else’s turf. The formality, the wigs, the gowns, the archaic language, the accompanying solicitor to whisper to; all of that was designed to let everyone know this was their turf, they were the big boys in this playground.
The macer brought over an evidence bag for her to look at: a clear bag containing a single gun. Everyone in the court shrank back from it. Morrow agreed with Finchley that she had witnessed it being put into the evidence bag and that it was indeed an SA80 assault rifle.
SA80s were standard issue to service personnel in conflict zones abroad. They were automatics, had thirty-round clips, and sights perfect for snap shooting, which meant swinging around and blowing away someone you’d barely had time to look at. The guns had the ID numbers scratched crudely off the barrels but they sliced through the metal and found the number in the deep indentation from the stamp. They had all been lost during the conflict in Afghanistan, where 90 per cent of the world’s heroin came from. Someone was bringing them back and hawking them to gangsters. She was disturbed at how powerful the guns were, that and their history: they had all been used in the sand and dirt of a conflict zone. Morrow felt as though a little of that distant overseas chaos was seeping back onto her turf.
From the corner of her eye, Morrow saw Brown sitting up tall to see the bag.
The macer saw him shift too and stiffened, the security guards sat straighter, the judge leaned forward, everyone suddenly aware that this was the sort of firepower Brown had at his disposal. Brown sat back and Morrow imagined that he was pleased by the fearful atmosphere in the room. He relished the discomfort of others.