The Red Road

by Denise Mina

  ‘That’s not all you are,’ said Morrow.

  ‘What they took.’ She froze then, like Francine in the doorway. She looked up. ‘Why do you care about Michael Brown? Is he someone you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘It was wrong,’ she said. It was a stupid thing to say. It was wrong to break up this family, to take Rose from Francine, to have Michael Brown released into a world he couldn’t handle. It was wrong to hold a child of fourteen to account for the murder of a man who had pimped her out. It was all wrong. Morrow had done it all so that she could sleep at night, so that she could feel like a better person than Riddell and Danny. She longed for some high ground to scramble towards but there wasn’t any.

  Rose stretched out a leg. ‘Bet he’s a nutcase now, is he?’

  ‘Michael’s done all right with a bad hand,’ lied Morrow. ‘You’ve done all right. Francine loves you, she trusts you.’

  Rose slumped over her knees, tears dripping onto the carpet – she looked ancient and broken. ‘But it was Julius I loved the best. I loved him. And he didn’t love me.’

  Morrow came down the stairs with Rose and the laptop and found the cops standing there, waiting. Francine was in the games room and had turned the television off to talk to the children. Everyone wanted to get out right now.

  ‘Ma’am,’ said McCarthy, ‘quick word. They got a film of two suspects on the ferry to and from Mull.’

  ‘Anyone we know?’

  ‘One unknown and Pokey Mulligan.’

  31

  Morrow was not allowed to arrest him. It could fatally compromise the case when it came to court if the defence called her and asked if he was her brother. She wasn’t even allowed to attend his arrest. The honour was handed to Wainwright, even though it was her case, her evidence and she had put the whole thing together. But the McMillan case overlapped and it was decided higher up that Wainwright’s division was a good fit.

  ‘Are you annoyed?’ asked Wainwright as they left the briefing in Peel Street.

  ‘Aye, I’m annoyed. I did all the work.’ But she was only half annoyed. The rest of the emotion fizzing up through her knees, making her stomach flutter, was reckless thrill.

  ‘This is like a diabetic giving me a cake,’ grinned Wainwright. ‘You can’t even have any.’

  He laughed loudly, bending back, aiming it over her head and Morrow laughed along, thinking about the demolition of the flats in the Gorbals and all her imagined complaints against Danny. He had never harmed her, she had to admit that to herself, and here she was, relishing the explosion.

  The viewing room in Stewart Street was as busy as a pub during an Old Firm match. DCs and DSs crowded in, wasting their piece breaks and after shifts for a glimpse of Danny’s interview. Morrow stayed at the back so that she couldn’t be watched. Every so often someone would take a chance and turn to glance at her, only to be met by her eye, making them flinch and turn back.

  Danny did himself proud. He didn’t fight or shout as Michael Brown had. He didn’t sneer. He didn’t speak more than to acknowledge his name, date of birth and home address. He fell in a straight column to the ground, without smoke or flying debris. There was no glass shower, no blood on the table.

  Cheated, the audience began to disperse.

  His lawyer answered for him, mostly. He did know Mulligan but Mulligan did not work for him. Danny did not arrange the murder of Robert McMillan and Simon Hume-Laing. He knew nothing about it.

  Wainwright presented him with some bits of evidence: the Stepper photos, which proved he’d met Pokey but nothing more; a receipt for a cash payment of petrol bought at the ferry terminal for Mull, found in Danny’s car – he had driven them up there but, again, that proved nothing. Morrow knew they were well served with CCTV cameras at ferry terminals and she doubted Danny knew where the cameras were.

  Then Wainwright told them that Mulligan was prepared to give evidence in court saying that Danny had paid him to kill Robert. Mulligan had the money and the money could be traced back to Danny through his taxi business. The accountant’s fingerprints were on it.

  Danny snorted and shifted in his chair. The lawyer glanced sideways at him, anxious, knowing they were off the script now.

  ‘Why would I pay him to kill guys on Mull?’ Danny was smirking but she could tell he was nervous.

  ‘Money,’ said Wainwright.

  His laugh was genuine this time, if bitter. ‘I’ve got money.’

  ‘You’ve got 3.2 million,’ said Wainwright.

  Danny didn’t flinch but his lawyer sat forward. ‘Where are you getting that number from?’

  Wainwright kept his eyes on Danny. ‘Taxi business turnover last year. Accounts file at Companies House. You’re the licence owner.’

  ‘No,’ said Danny, ‘I’m not.’

  The lawyer leaned forward, trying to sit between them. ‘And it doesn’t answer the question: if he had that much money why would he take money to commission the murder of someone?’

  ‘As a favour to a powerful friend ... There’s only so many big cars a man can buy. Past a certain point everyone has to start making connections abroad, don’t they, Danny? But you’ve got no connections.’

  Morrow shut her eyes and held her breath. This was the point at which it could go wrong – all Wainwright had to do was blurt it. But he didn’t. He didn’t mention Dawood’s name.

  He shut his file. ‘I think we’ll leave it there just now.’

  The viewing room had emptied now and Morrow sat alone watching the small screen. Dawood McMann, a wise Solomon, sat at the interview table and conferred with his lawyer in short whispers, deciding who would be going to prison and for how long. He had been promised a non-custodial sentence on the condition that he gave them evidence against a certain number of people amounting to a certain tariff of charges.

  Morrow watched Dawood hand them Mulligan, a gang of car thieves, the family of the young guy who had taken her car dealer’s Lotus, two other rings of moneylenders out in the east, and Danny. Danny would be going away for a very long time on a conspiracy to murder charge. It was disgusting to watch. Dawood was so calculating, she imagined him asking Danny to arrange Robert McMillan’s murder, not to cover up his own activities but as a trap, to get him out of the way so that some acolyte of Dawood’s could take the £3.2 million. Three whole areas of the city would be without a dominant influence now. Danny was gone, the Mitchells were weakened, the trade in stolen cars interrupted, whole ecosystems wiped out. The ensuing scrabble for control of the city would be carnage.

  She sat with her arms crossed, examining her conscience, thinking about the Red Road flats collapsing in a cloud of grey dust and rubble. Same mass, different shape, one big mess.

  Dawood smiled at his lawyer, their heads inclined towards one another as they decided another fate and Morrow stood up. She wanted to spit at the screen.

  Alone in the room, she pulled her coat off a chair so quickly she knocked it over and it fell, banging loudly off the hard floor, and she liked that.

  32

  Morrow and McCarthy stood in the street and looked up at the office premises for Intelligence Solutions. It was a nice old building in the centre of town, next window to a luxury estate agents where the window showed aerial photographs of giant stretches of the Highlands for sale. A mountain range was for sale. By contrast, the private investigator’s office was sober and discreet. A brass plaque announced Intelligence Solutions but didn’t declare the type of investigations undertaken. Morrow had looked at their website on the way here in the car. They highlighted adoption tracing and pre-employment screening, evidence gathering and missing persons’ investigations. She had called the number listed and got an answer machine, even though it was within office hours. And now it was shut. It seemed odd and unfriendly for a company that was supposed to provide a service.

  They went back to the office. As they walked in McCarthy talked about ice cream and how much he liked it while Morrow thought
about Harris and how much she missed him. Not for the first time she wondered if she had done the right thing, telling the truth against her interests, but then she remembered that Harris had been found out anyway. McMahon and Gamerro hadn’t told the truth at the time and maybe Michael Brown had gone to prison for a vicious crime he didn’t commit. They must have seen him the way she did, as a crime about to happen, as an arse who couldn’t be trusted, but that didn’t give them the right to cover up. They were afraid.

  McCarthy went off to the lockers to check his private phone and Morrow, distracted, went through to the CID wing. She said hello and went into her office, put her bag down, checked her messages. She looked out and found Riddell’s office door shut. He might be having a meeting.

  She was considering whether or not to knock when the door opened and Riddell stood there, smiling back into someone, hand out to shake. A civilian came out of his office, tall and fat, gold-framed glasses, brown hair, long faced. His clothes were what caught her eye. Jeans and a very good jacket in brown tweed, soft wool and tailored so that it came in at the waist and out at the shoulders. His shoes were brown brogues that looked so sturdy and well polished, they might have served several generations. He was not the sort of civilian they usually saw in London Road and he seemed to have given Riddell some very good news.

  ‘Ah, DI Morrow.’ Riddell held his hand out to introduce her. ‘This is David Monkton.’

  The moment David Monkton turned and met her eye, Morrow knew he was there for her. He held out his hand.

  ‘Alex Morrow, I’ve heard a lot about you.’ For a moment she saw disgust flickering behind his eyes but then he gave an almost-blink, half closing his eyes and rolling them up to wipe them clean. When they righted themselves he smiled warmly. ‘All good, of course.’

  Like a domino chain she saw suddenly how useful she would be to him: astute and hard-working, centre of a network of cops, contacts made through Danny and Harris, even, untouchable reputation. She put out her hand.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. ‘I was just at your office.’

  ‘How strange,’ he said, though she felt he knew that already. ‘And I’m at yours.’

  He laughed then and Riddell laughed too.

  ‘Sir ...’ Morrow said anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Riddell, ‘that other thing is all done. All being interviewed in the north.’

  Danny and Dawood and Pokey Mulligan sitting in separate interview rooms, being confronted with SOCA reports, with Stepper’s photographs and the ferry’s CCTV. She had Rose Wilson to bring in and question and she was glad that she hadn’t seen Riddell to brief him yet. She looked at Monkton and felt that he would be her high ground.

  ‘They found, um ...’ Riddell gave a discreet glance at Monkton. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  Monkton gave a condescending smile, as though Riddell had just passed a very important test related to his future employment.

  ‘Don’t let me interfere with police business,’ he smirked, ‘I’m just in for an informal—’

  ‘No, no,’ said Riddell, ‘it’s just, um.’ He looked at Morrow. ‘It’s all, you know, it’s good. Ties together. With the other thing.’

  Riddell smiled at her, Monkton smiled at him, and Morrow thought about fourteen-year-old Michael Brown’s mugshot. No one cared about that. They were all doing fine.

  ‘DI Morrow, can I speak to you for a moment?’

  Monkton was looking at the door to her office, leaning towards it slightly, and Riddell was following his prompt, craning towards the door, smiling, glad he had passed and keen to comply. The sheer pressure of social prompts almost made her ears pop.

  ‘Upstairs?’ she said.

  Both men looked at her.

  Just then Daniel came bumbling out of the incident room, saw them, the group by Morrow’s door, Alex looking small in front of the two large men who were standing too close looking down at her angrily.

  ‘Oh,’ said Daniel, and retreated back into the office, half closing the door.

  ‘Daniel!’ Morrow called her out. ‘Come with me and Mr Monkton upstairs, please.’

  Sheepishly smiling at DCI Riddell, Daniel came out, paused and walked to the end of the corridor. The tense silence was filled with the sound of her spectacular thighs rasping against each other.

  Monkton turned to Riddell and spoke very calmly. ‘I won’t take long, Kevin.’

  Riddell looked at Morrow, pleading with her not to piss off his new, best hope. She hadn’t known he was thinking about leaving. Monkton looked at her too.

  She remembered the photograph of Michael Brown as a boy, dirty yellow T-shirt, eyes cast down, no one in the world to stand up for him and she said, ‘Upstairs, please, sir.’

  But Monkton was not going to go. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘You don’t know what this is.’

  ‘I have an appointment with your Chief—’

  ‘Mr Monkton, you had the time to talk to me in my office, let’s use that time to speak upstairs.’

  And she had his elbow and she was guiding him gently towards the door to the stairs and thinking about Danny. Danny in his car staring out at her, Danny’s need for her to keep lies alive.

  The door was shutting behind her as she and Monkton turned to the stairs and she glimpsed for a moment DCI Riddell standing small and dismayed like a child denied at Christmas.

  Alone on the stairs Monkton muttered, ‘Know about you.’

  She didn’t respond. Interview room 2 was busy, so she took 3 and Daniel came in after her. Monkton sat down quite calmly on the interviewee side of the table, a smirk on his face, hands open on the table top as they sat down opposite him and fitted the cassette tapes in and told him he was being filmed.

  ‘I do know the drill,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Then you’ll know this is just an informal chat about some matters arising from a case we’ve been investigating.’

  Monkton raised his eyebrows slowly at her, suggesting that there was no case that she could possibly be investigating that he didn’t know about.

  ‘David,’ she said, aware that Daniel was very comfortable in Monkton’s presence. ‘You are the director of Intelligence Solutions, is that right?’

  He glanced at the camera in the corner of the room, licked his lips and said yes.

  ‘Can you tell me about your business, and what you do?’

  ‘We are,’ he addressed the camera, ‘a private investigations firm. We do many different types of cases, all of which are within the law, I might add’ – he took the time to smile at her, then went back to the camera – ‘from adoption tracing to legacy placement. We also do background checks for prospective employees etc.’

  Then he flashed her the two-hundred-grand smile and waited for the next question.

  ‘Those are all very lovely things,’ she said. ‘Now, before you set up the company—’

  ‘Don’t you think those things matter to people?’ He wasn’t looking at the camera now. He was looking at her, eyes hooded behind his expensive glasses, nostrils flared.

  A dog leg. A distraction. He was trying to construct a dispute where she would argue on the tape that putting families back together was bad and he could argue it was good.

  ‘You used to be a policeman, didn’t you?’

  He saw that it wasn’t going to take. He took a breath, smiled. ‘One of you, yes.’

  ‘Do you remember what you were doing the night Princess Diana died?’

  He did remember it and again tried to derail her. ‘In Paris?’

  ‘You were in Paris?’

  ‘No.’ He laughed, light, sparkling. ‘She was in Paris. She died in Paris. Very sad.’ And he made a face that told her he was feeling sad and he shook his head to tell the world that it shouldn’t have happened and it made him sad.

  ‘Where were you the next day?’ Morrow sounded flat but she felt righteousness flare in her chest. They were all lying, all of them, dodging the truth out of fear or self-interest or f
or a few quid. But she wasn’t.

  ‘I suppose ...’ He rubbed his chin and looked at the ceiling for an answer. ‘I suppose I would have been working.’

  ‘As a police officer?’

  ‘As a police officer.’

  ‘Where were you stationed?’

  ‘Stewart Street.’

  ‘Who was your DS at that time?’

  ‘Hm ...’ He pretended to try and remember.

  ‘You know, David, most people remember exactly where they were that night. If you say you don’t people might think that you’re lying.’

  He was pleased with her now because she was providing the distraction. He smiled at her, this rich and gorgeous man, this connected man who had the means and the power to grant absolution for almost any transgression.

  She blinked and for a second saw Michael Brown, standing up at the same table, handcuffed, fumbling his flaccid cock out of his elasticated trousers to scare and disgust her into looking away from him. And she remembered Brown’s face, a mask of terror, fury at his terror and horror at his life.

  She opened her eyes, remembering McCarthy using alcohol wipes on that same table to wipe away the tiny flecks of piss Brown had flicked onto it.

  ‘People remember.’ She had almost forgotten what they were talking about. ‘Because it was shocking and afterwards everyone talked about where they were when they heard, over and over we tell those stories. Why do we tell those stories? Are we trying to put ourselves into her story? Whatever we do it for, everyone knows where they were, don’t they?’

  Thinking she was offering him an out Monkton went for it. ‘Yeah, I don’t think I did talk about it—’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that everyone remembers where they were that night.’

  Monkton nodded, still thinking that she was telling him to come up with a better lie.

  ‘We have clear documentation that shows that you took Michael Brown’s fingerprints that night.’

  ‘Michael Brown.’ He squinted at the table, shook his head. ‘I don’t think I remember a Michael Brown ...’