Blindside acalf-3

by G. J. Moffat

  Fatigue settled down through his flesh and into his bones. He took another sip from the Coke, not tasting it. He’d noticed in the last two weeks how food no longer held any pleasure for him. It was fuel for his body and nothing more than that. He hadn’t had a beer in weeks. Didn’t know any more what it was that used to give him pleasure.

  Raines left the TV on and went to the bedroom, going straight to the wardrobe and pulling down a box from the shelf above the hanging rail. He took it back to the living room and set the box down on the table, taking the lid off and lifting out a rag. It was smudged and well worn and smelled of metal and gun oil.

  Setting the rag down on the table, he placed his gun on top of it and began methodically taking it apart and cleaning it like he had done a thousand times before.

  Take care of your weapon and it will take care of you.

  When he was finished cleaning the gun, he put it back together and made sure that the mechanisms were all working correctly, slipping the magazine out of the handgrip and racking the slide.

  He took the magazine out again and held it up, looking at the exposed bullet sitting on top of the magazine. It looked innocuous, like it was nothing at all. How could something that small be capable of doing so much damage?

  The metal of the magazine felt cool against his forehead when he pressed it there. It slid smoothly back into the handgrip with a satisfying click and Raines jacked a round into the breech.

  Ready to rock ’n’ roll.

  That’s what all the young guys said before they headed out on their first mission. Like it was a movie or something. Not real.

  Then a mine took your leg off.

  Your blood pumped out into the sand.

  Real enough for you now?

  And what happened when you got home? Thanks, son, for all your sacrifices. Here’re your papers. Now go find a real job and pay your own medical bills.

  Can’t afford it?

  Tough shit.

  Suck it up, soldier. No one never promised you nothin’.

  ‘You reap what you sow,’ Raines said out loud, turning the gun and placing it at his temple.

  He put his finger inside the trigger guard and touched it to the trigger. Felt it give.

  Just a little pressure and it’ll all be over. No Feds watching your every move. No more deals with the Devil. Just the quiet.

  He applied more pressure to the trigger. Wondered if he’d hear the explosion as the gun went off. Would he be aware of that split-second as the tip of the bullet passed through the barrel of the gun before shattering the bone of his skull and shredding his brain?

  Wondered if he would feel the pain.

  His leg started to ache under the scar.

  He pressed the trigger some more. Realised that it was more than he had ever done before. Wondered if this time he would keep going until all the lights went out.

  The phone rang through in the kitchen. Raines waited for it to ring out.

  It started again as soon as it had stopped. He sighed, released his finger from the trigger and placed the gun on the rag spread out over the table.

  Went to the kitchen to get the phone.

  ‘Sorry about earlier,’ Matt Horn said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you when you were here.’

  ‘I wasn’t upset.’

  ‘What are you doing right now?’

  Raines rubbed absently at the welt by his temple where he had pressed the gun to his head.

  ‘Nothing much, you know. Watching TV.’

  ‘Anything good?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Want to come over for a beer?’

  He stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, looked at the gun sitting there on the table.

  ‘We could watch a game or something,’ Horn said. ‘Like we used to. I mean, we haven’t done that in a while.’

  ‘Sounds good.’ He hung up and went back to the table, looking down at the gun sitting there. He wondered if Horn was now a security risk and whether he should go over there again tonight and make sure he wouldn’t talk to anyone. But he couldn’t find it in himself to do that. Not after everything.

  He switched off the TV, picked up his keys and went outside into the dark. The gun still lying on the rag on his table.

  Part Seven:

  Homeland

  1

  Wednesday

  Wiping condensation from the mirror in her bathroom, Irvine leaned forward and looked at the side of her face. It looked worse than it had last night. She prodded gently at the stitches in the cut by her eye and winced at the pain.

  She stood back a little and turned her face to the side so that she could see the full extent of the damage. The area around the wound was swollen and discoloured and her eye had closed a little overnight. A dull throb pulsed behind her eye so she took two painkillers from the drawer in the vanity unit beneath the sink and washed them down with water from the tap.

  Irvine got dressed in her bedroom and was drying her hair when Connor wobbled into the room in his jammies and wrapped himself around her legs. She switched the dryer off and lifted her son into her arms.

  ‘Hey, little man. How are you today?’

  He grinned at her and buried his face in her neck, putting his hands in her still damp hair and twisting it around his fingers. He pulled back from her and put a hand on her bruised face.

  ‘You hurt, Mummy?’

  Irvine stroked his hair back from his forehead and kissed him.

  ‘No,’ she lied.

  ‘Good.’

  She hugged him again.

  ‘Breakfast?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Toast.’ His face contorted as he considered other options. ‘Juice.’

  Irvine admired his ability to communicate his precise needs in as few words as possible — thought it would be nice if little boys could grow into men and not lose that trait.

  After dropping Connor at the childminder, Irvine looked up and saw a jet high above her, fumes trailing behind it. She checked her watch and guessed that Logan and Cahill were probably sitting around the lounge at Heathrow waiting for their connection to Denver right now.

  She got in the car and her phone rang. It was Armstrong.

  ‘How’s the face? Bet it looks like you’ve gone ten rounds with someone.’

  ‘I’ve looked better.’

  ‘You coming in today?’

  ‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘No reason. Just that after last night, you know…’

  ‘Listen, why don’t you speak to Jim Murphy. See if the forensics people have come up with anything yet. I spoke with him last night. He said they had found Lewski’s clothes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not sure. Nearby somewhere.’

  ‘Intact?’

  ‘No. They’d been burned just like we thought. But there might be something they can get.’

  ‘Blood results back yet?’

  ‘Not as of last night. Ask him about that too.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find him.’

  Irvine started her car and tuned the radio to a news channel. There was a brief story about the body found in the river but there was nothing much to it. Basic information. She switched it off and drove into town.

  Armstrong wasn’t around when Irvine got to her desk so she called the CCTV centre again and spoke to the shift supervisor, hoping he would tell her that the stuff was on its way to her already.

  ‘Dan Patrick,’ the supervisor said when he came on the line.

  ‘Dan, this is DC Irvine from Strathclyde CID. I’m looking to see if we can get anything from the last couple of days in connection with a murder investigation. I spoke to someone already about getting some recordings over here.’

  ‘Okay. We’re kind of short-staffed. But I’ll help if I can.’

  She got the impression that no one had done anything about looking at the footage yet. Irvine went through the circumstances of Joanna Lewski’s death and the
time periods that she thought would be crucial. Again.

  ‘We should have some coverage that might help,’ Patrick told her. ‘It’ll take a while to go through it, though. I mean, that’s a lot of hours.’

  ‘I don’t need you guys to go over it. And I need it now. Send it to DS Jim Murphy at Pitt Street. Today.’

  There was a brief pause before he replied.

  ‘I’ll get someone on to it.’

  2

  After an hour, there was still no sign of Armstrong. Irvine picked up her desk phone and called his mobile.

  ‘Kenny, it’s me. How are you getting on? Any progress after the post-mortem yesterday?’

  ‘I’m over here at the mortuary with the pathologist. He’s finished with his report and I’ve got some samples from Lewski’s body. I thought I’d pick them up and rush them over to the lab. Let forensics get a head start on things.’

  ‘You should have told me you were going there.’

  ‘Just trying to move things on, you know?’

  ‘I told you that I’m fine, Kenny. You don’t have to treat me like an invalid.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘What kind of samples did we get?’ she asked.

  ‘A swab of semen and also some hairs.’

  ‘She had sex before she was killed?’

  ‘That’s what he says.’

  ‘If we’re lucky we’ll get a DNA hit on it.’

  ‘I’ll get the stuff up to Pitt Street, to the lab, then meet you back at your desk. What you been up to?’

  ‘I’m going to see the lawyer here, find out who owns Suzie Murray’s flat.’

  ‘It’s not hers?’

  ‘She said no.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s keep this thing moving forward.’

  ‘Hey, how did you get on with Jim Murphy?’

  ‘Yeah, they haven’t finished with the clothes yet. Don’t worry, I’m on it.’

  Irvine went down the stairs to the ground floor of the building and through the main reception area to a corridor at the back. At the end of the corridor was a large, open-plan room with four desks. The force’s only full-time in-house lawyer was a middle-aged woman with a fondness for green tea and blueberry muffins who sat at the desk nearest the door. The muffin habit had not been kind to her waistline. She looked up as Irvine sat in the chair on the other side of the desk.

  Irvine smiled and introduced herself. The lawyer took her glasses off and fidgeted with a paper clip that she had bent out of shape, using the end of it to scrape under her nails. She brushed the resulting debris off her desk and on to the floor.

  Irvine’s smile faltered.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ the lawyer asked, boredom clear in her expression.

  ‘I’m looking for some help. It’s on a murder investigation.’

  That caught her interest. She put the misshapen paper clip down and clasped her hands.

  ‘What do you need from me?’

  ‘I need to log into your Land Register account. For information on a flat.’

  ‘What kind of information?’

  ‘Who owns it? When they bought it? That kind of thing, you know.’ Irvine smiled again. ‘Can you log me in now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Irvine followed her to a spare desk where the lawyer set her up to access the search function on the Register. She waited for the lawyer to leave her alone, entered the address of Lewski’s flat and put in a request for the search results to be e-mailed to her. She thanked the lawyer and went back upstairs.

  There was an e-mail already in her inbox attaching the search report on the flat. It was owned by a company — not an individual. From the name, ‘ScotLets Limited’, she assumed that it probably held a number of properties for rent.

  Irvine opened the Internet browser on her own computer and went to the Companies House website — one that she could access directly without going through the lawyer. It had details of all companies incorporated in the UK. She found the search function and typed in ‘ScotLets’.

  The result gave her basic information, but not the details of who owned the shares in the company or who its directors were. She clicked on the ‘print page’ option and went to collect the sheet of paper from the network printer.

  The registered office of the company was at the office of an accountancy firm in a commercial park north of the city centre.

  Irvine went back to her desktop and clicked on an icon that allowed her access to more detailed reports on companies — for a price — and printed off the information she found for the shareholders and directors. She saw that there were two shareholders and that those same people were the only directors. They had listed their address as being the same as the registered office.

  A quick Google search on the accountancy firm disclosed that it had two partners — and that they were the same people who owned and operated ScotLets. Nothing unusual in any of that, Irvine thought. Plenty of professionals put their money into property and did it through separate businesses, but she made a note to go and visit the accountants with Armstrong later that day.

  She knew from experience that there were professionals out there who had no problem in dealing with dirty money.

  3

  There was a sandwich and a can of Coke sitting on Irvine’s desk when she came back from a quick walk around the block to get some fresh air. It was just past twelve-thirty. She looked round and saw Armstrong in Liam Moore’s room. Armstrong saw her looking and walked over to her desk.

  ‘Thought you might be hungry,’ he told her. ‘I got chicken salad coz I thought it would be safe enough. Who doesn’t like chicken, right?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He sat on the edge of her desk.

  ‘You know the boss?’ she asked him.

  Armstrong looked over at Moore’s room.

  ‘Not really, no. I mean, I’m kind of into boxing and I know he used to fight so we were passing the time.’

  Irvine touched the swollen side of her face. ‘You having a laugh at my expense?’

  ‘No. Anyway, it suits you. Makes you look tough.’

  Irvine opened the sandwich and the Coke and ate while Armstrong explained that it would be tomorrow at the earliest before the forensics lab would be able to create a DNA profile from the semen sample and check it against the national database.

  ‘What do you want to do this afternoon?’ he asked.

  She told him about the accountants who appeared to own the Lewski/Murray flat.

  ‘So let’s go talk to them.’

  ‘Should we give them a call in advance?’

  ‘Nah. I mean, if they are scumbags it’ll be best to catch them on the hop. Did you run the names to see if anything came up?’

  ‘No prior convictions.’

  ‘There’s a first time for everything.’

  Armstrong drove them to the office of the accountants Marshall Scott, picking his way through the city traffic and treating every amber light as an invitation to accelerate. Irvine tutted a few times but he didn’t seem to hear. Either that or he was ignoring her.

  ‘Which division were those guys from?’ she asked him.

  ‘Which guys?’

  ‘The uniforms we spoke to about Lewski.’

  ‘Stewart Street.’

  Irvine called Pitt Street from her mobile and asked to be connected to the Stewart Street station. The duty sergeant came on the line and told her that the two officers were out on patrol.

  ‘I’m looking for information on some working girls,’ Irvine said. ‘Who’s the Super there?’

  ‘Neal Pope.’

  ‘Can you connect me?’

  The line hummed and then another man spoke.

  ‘Pope.’

  ‘Sir, this is DC Irvine from CID.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m looking for some information on a couple of working girls in your division. Other girls they know, who their handler is, that kind of thing.’

  ‘What’s this about?�
�

  ‘It’s a murder inquiry, sir.’

  ‘Who’s the stiff?’

  Charming.

  ‘Joanna Lewski.’

  ‘She one of the prozzies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s the other one called?’

  ‘Suzie Murray.’

  ‘Right. Give me your number and leave it with me. I’ll have someone call you back.’

  ‘This is urgent, sir.’

  ‘I appreciate that. We’ll get right back to you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Armstrong was smirking when she looked at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you write that book? You know, the one about making friends and alienating people.’

  ‘I just asked him for information. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘He’s a Super.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You told him it was a murder inquiry and that it was urgent he got back to you. I mean, I think he would have worked that one out for himself.’

  Irvine closed her eyes.

  ‘You need to relax more,’ Armstrong told her.

  The accountants’ office was the smallest of seven two-storey units in a neat commercial park just off the M8. As they pulled into an empty parking space at the entrance to the unit, Irvine noticed two expensive German sports cars with vanity plates.

  ‘Looks like they do okay for a small outfit,’ she said, nodding at the cars.

  Armstrong applied the handbrake and looked over. ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions.’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  They pushed through double glass doors into the reception where an attractive young woman with a telephone headset smiled and asked them if she could help.

  Armstrong took out his gold shield to identify himself. Irvine felt vaguely inadequate next to him with only the standard issue warrant card. That and the fact the woman was staring at the injuries to her face.

  ‘We’re looking to speak to…’ Irvine looked at the printout in her hand. ‘Mr Marshall and Mr Scott.’

  The woman’s smile faltered.

  ‘They’re both here, right? I mean, we saw their cars outside.’