Truth Lies Bleeding

by Tony Black

  ‘You might try speaking to your daughter,’ Joyce greeted him in her usual way.

  ‘Good morning, Sophie darling.’ He knew he was using the girl as some form of emotional ammunition.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ snapped Joyce. Her face had set hard already. The dew was still on the grass and Joyce was moaning, thought Brennan.

  ‘What would you like me to say to her?’

  ‘Well, how about why are you not going to school?’

  Brennan mimicked her: ‘Why are you not going to school?’ He paused, added, ‘Sophie darling.’

  The girl kept her eyes focused on the television screen, said, ‘I don’t feel well.’

  Brennan turned towards his wife, repeating, ‘She doesn’t feel well.’ It was their first exchange of the day and already he knew that the next one would be no improvement.

  Joyce turned away, went to the kitchen sink and turned the tap on to fill an empty pot. When the water was tipping over the brim, she turned the tap the other way. She dropped cutlery and other household items on top of the pot. Each one clanged loudly, each one echoed her mood.

  Brennan started to fasten his tie, to pocket his keys and coins from the counter. Joyce turned. ‘If she’s going to stay off school, allegedly sick, then she can at least tidy her room . . . Have you seen the state of her room?’

  Brennan wasn’t given an opportunity to answer: Sophie stood up, glowered at her mother and stated, ‘Why should I tidy my room when the whole world’s a mess?’

  Joyce put her hands on her hips, turned to her husband. ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that?’

  Brennan shrugged. ‘She has a point.’ He walked out the door.

  In the car he contemplated calling in to the office but figured he would be there soon enough anyway. If there were any important developments he would find out when he got in.

  The roads were heavy with traffic again. Cyclists weaved in and out of the bus lanes and made gestures at drivers when they thought they were being denied ample road space. The commute to the station always seemed like a worthless task to Brennan. All time spent travelling was like intellectual and emotional stasis for the detective. He had never been able to adhere to the adage that it was better to travel than to arrive. Travel was dead time; arrival was all about the commencement of action, and Brennan was all about the action. By Ravelston Dykes he had started to drum his fingers on the wheel. He had tried to go over things in his mind that he had to do, but he knew the landscape shifted so quickly that any assessment he made of the current situation could have changed by the time he reached the office. He still felt the girl was local; his instinct was to question the teenager, Trish Brown, and see what she really knew. He hoped McGuire had got onto that like he had told him.

  At Fettes station, Brennan put the car into second gear and rolled the VW Passat into the nearest parking space. As he got out of the driver’s door he reminded himself that he was going into the bear pit. He needed to have his wits about him and he needed to be aware of the potential dangers. There was more than one person in the station who would be cheering his downfall. The thought of thwarting their attempts was enough to make him grin at the challenge.

  At the front door Charlie looked up over the News.

  ‘Hey, Rob, come here.’

  Brennan walked over to the counter as Charlie lowered the paper. ‘Morning, Charl.’

  ‘Aye, fuck that. You seen this rag?’

  The DI glanced at the paper’s front page: they had splashed on the murder. The headline read: ANOTHER BRUTAL MURDER. The picture was of the alleyway, artfully strapped off with blue-and-white crime scene tape. In the subheading the newspaper claimed: POLICE BAFFLED BY GIRL’S KILLING.

  Brennan sighed, threw down the paper.

  ‘She’s seen this, I take it?’

  Charlie furrowed his brow. ‘What do you think?’ He pointed at the paper. ‘She’s after the Chief Constable’s job, y’know . . . She’s not going to like this kind of thing blotting her CV.’

  Brennan turned back to the paper, clocking the reporter’s byline: Aylish Dunn. He stored it away then took to the stairs, thought: Will the day get any better?

  At the top of the steps he unbuttoned his jacket and loosened his tie. The temperature in the building was always too high but he imagined it had gone up a couple of notches this morning. As he walked through CID there was little of the usual chatter. He could see ahead into the door of Incident Room One. There were a few people standing around chatting but he couldn’t see DC Stephen McGuire. Brennan managed a few steps closer to the incident room when he heard the door of the Chief Super’s office open. As he turned he caught sight of Galloway. ‘Rob, a moment.’

  He thought she looked stressed, hair pulled back tight – it wasn’t a look he had seen on her before and it worried him. As he got closer to her office he could see McGuire in there, sitting down. The DC looked even worse than Galloway did.

  As Brennan entered the office, the Chief Super closed the door behind him. The blinds had already been shut. He looked down to where McGuire was sitting but the DC kept his gaze front. There was a copy of the News on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Right, Rob, glad you’re here.’

  He wondered if this was sarcasm.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He pulled out the chair next to McGuire, sat. ‘Morning, Stevie.’

  ‘Sir.’

  The Chief Super walked round to the other side of the desk, smoothing her hair as she went. ‘There’s been some developments . . .’ She sat down and opened a blue folder on her desk.

  ‘There has?’

  She looked up; her eyes widened. ‘We tried to contact you. Was your phone off?’

  ‘No, I, erm . . .’ Brennan knew he was squirming, ‘I missed a call.’

  ‘Never heard of calling back?’

  ‘I was on the way to the office.’

  She seemed unconvinced, but let it slide. ‘Look, Stevie has the details. Why don’t you fill Rob in?’

  McGuire coughed nervously. He looked unprepared for the honour. ‘Eh, sure.’ He sat fidgeting in his chair, uncrossed his legs. ‘We have a positive ID.’

  Brennan leaned forward. ‘The teenager – Trish whatever – she came good?’

  Galloway interrupted, ‘No, Rob . . . That theory of yours was pretty wide of the mark.’

  He felt stung. Looked first to Galloway, then back to McGuire. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you do,’ said Galloway. ‘Go on, Stevie.’

  By the time the DC had finished detailing the fact that the parents of sixteen-year-old Carly Donald had been able to identify their daughter without any doubts, Brennan’s mind had shifted from disbelief to stupefaction. He had dropped all the facts into the personal computer that was his brain and the answer had came back the same every time: local girl. If he was wrong, and it seemed he was, then he had lost his touch – that, or this murder investigation was shaping up unlike any other he’d been involved in.

  ‘Have you got that, Rob? . . . She’s not a local girl,’ said Galloway.

  Brennan twisted on the chair. ‘Yes, I heard the boy.’ The news had came as a shock to him, but the method of receiving it had come as an added embarrassment. He had told McGuire to relay all developments to him first. There was the missed call, and he could use that to cover his arse, but the lad had fucked him over for a second time and he didn’t like it. Putting Galloway in the picture about every new development on the case before him was going to make it impossible to operate, and the thought burned Brennan. He needed to get away, get out of the Chief Super’s office and try and make sense of all of this.

  Brennan stood up. ‘Right, I want the full SP, Stevie.’

  McGuire looked at the Chief Super first – was he waiting for her say-so? thought Brennan. ‘So, let’s get moving . . . Now, Stevie.’

  Galloway nodded and the DC rose, turned for the door. Brennan followed. He got as far as the other side of the glass, handle in h
and, before the Chief Super called him back. ‘A word before you go, Rob.’

  He halted. ‘I’ve got my hands full here.’

  She pointed to the seat he’d risen from. ‘A word, Rob.’

  Chapter 19

  BRENNAN FELT THE MUSCLES IN his shoulders tightening as he went back into the Chief Super’s office. He didn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him lowered before her – he brushed aside the offer of the chair and stood, hands on waist. ‘What is it?’

  Galloway rose to face him. She wasn’t going to give him a height advantage when she was wearing four-inch heels, he thought.

  She picked up the News, dropped it again. ‘They’re having a fucking field day.’

  Brennan shrugged. ‘Tell the press office.’

  She pointed a maroon fingernail at him. ‘I’m telling you.’

  He looked her in the eye. ‘What are you telling me, ma’am?’

  That riled her, the ma’am bit, always did. Brennan knew he was in no position to be cocky. To be cocky, you needed something to back it up, or big-time supporters, and he had neither.

  Galloway upped the volume a notch. ‘I’m telling you that if there’s another set of headlines like that, I’ll be wearing your balls as earrings. Do you get me?’

  He smiled. ‘I think they might stretch your ears.’

  She didn’t flicker, held her face stone. ‘I’m warning you, Rob . . . You’re on probation, don’t forget that. As easily as I handed you this case I can take it away.’

  It was a bluff, he was sure of it; who else was there to take over? The squad was stretched too tight. Not even her golden boy Lauder could take on another case. He was sound. Brennan stared at her for a moment: she was no more police than Stevie McGuire, she was a shiny-arsed careerist. A manager; an actress like Wullie said. But she had rank, and the force was all about rank. He held himself in check, said, ‘Nobody wants this bastard more than me.’

  She made a moue of her mouth. ‘I know that, but there’s a difference between wanting something and getting it.’ She’d made her point, asserted herself. As she sat down again she picked up the newspaper, folded it in two and dropped it in the waste-paper basket beside the desk. ‘No more headlines, Rob.’

  Brennan nodded, turned for the door.

  DC Stevie McGuire was waiting for him outside the Chief Super’s office. ‘Rob, can we talk?’

  Brennan walked past him, heading for the incident room. ‘Oh, we’ll talk Stevie. Soon enough.’

  Brennan walked fast, his stride powerful enough to lift the carpet at his heels. As he reached the room, the door was already open. One or two officers approached; he could tell they sensed the shift. Brennan flagged them down, said, ‘One minute.’ He made for the end of the room, stood looking at the board where the pictures of sixteen-year-old Carly Donald had been pasted up. There was a lot of white space.

  As Brennan placed his jacket on the back of a chair a small crowd began to gather. He noticed DC Stevie McGuire lurking at the back and motioned him to the front.

  ‘Right, listen up.’ Brennan’s voice reverberated around the room. ‘We have a positive ID for our victim. I don’t need to tell you that we have our nuts over the fire, and the press are pouring on the petrol, so we need to get moving.’ He turned to McGuire, who had reached the front of the crowd. ‘Right, Stevie . . . Fill them in on our victim.’

  There was silence in the room as the DC cleared his throat, and read from the file. ‘Carly Donald was sixteen, a schoolgirl from Pitlochry.’ Some audible surprise was registered.

  ‘Listen up,’ said Brennan. ‘Go on, Stevie.’

  ‘She’s the daughter of the Reverend John Donald, and his wife, Frieda, a housewife. They’ve formally identified the body.’

  Brennan took over. ‘Right. That’s it so far. Not much to go on but we’ll be interviewing the parents in due course. Meantime, I want this girl’s world turned upside down and anything that falls out put on my desk. I want you out there knocking doors, now. Friends, teachers, hockey team-mates, youth club members, the man she bought her Smarties from – I want them all spoken to. Got that?’

  The group answered together, ‘Yes, sir.’

  Brennan held the crowd rapt as he moved on to disseminate specific instructions. ‘Brian, I want you to grab all the CCTV. I want footage from the train stations, the bus station, taxi ranks, BP garages, truck stops . . . Anywhere you might think she’d show if she was coming here from the north.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Lou, get on the homeless shelters in the city. She had to be staying somewhere. Check out all the halfway houses, the cheap hostels in Hillside and elsewhere. This was a young girl away from home . . . Think where she’d go, think where she’d end up.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Brennan looked round the room again. His eyes lighted on another face. ‘Davie, find out how she supported herself. Was she brass? If she was working the streets, who was pimping her? Call the faces in – all of them.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  The room remained quiet, still, as Brennan leaned forward, rested his elbows on the back of his chair. ‘I don’t need to remind you that this is a young girl from a respectable family. She’s been cut up in the most brutal fashion imaginable. The media are already interested. When they get the full details they are going to go ape-shit. I want you all to work fast, but stay alert. Don’t let anything slide, don’t think twice about throwing up anything to Stevie or me – we’ll look at everything. Now, one more thing: I’m cancelling all leave with immediate effect.’ He paused, expecting to hear groans. None came. ‘Good, I’m glad you understand. We need to move like lightning. Our killer has already tried to cover their tracks and I want this bastard behind bars. Right, get to work.’

  The group scattered. Brennan yanked his jacket from the chair, headed for the office. As he went, he called out, ‘Stevie, in here now.’

  DC McGuire followed him in.

  ‘Shut the door.’ The young officer pressed a hand on the glass panel; there was a gentle click as the door closed.

  McGuire was speaking before he turned round: ‘I didn’t go to her. I went to you, but your phone rung out . . . What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘How about fucking try again?’

  McGuire’s mouth opened, closed quickly, then words seemed to come through clenched lips: ‘I did. I did. Look, she was here, in the office and asking questions all night. I could hardly . . .’

  Brennan got the picture. He conceded that McGuire hadn’t gone out of his way to shaft him. At least, he gave him the benefit of the doubt on this occasion. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours to think about settling scores right now. The case had to be first priority.

  ‘Did you haul in Trish Brown last night?’ said Brennan.

  ‘Yes, I did. Look, boss, I saw the initial pathology report too and I thought about the indicators but I just don’t think—’

  Brennan interrupted, ‘Good, I don’t fucking want you to think. Did you get her swabbed and dabbed?’

  McGuire nodded. ‘Yes. Should have results around late morning.’

  ‘Where’s she now – Trish?’

  ‘Downstairs. We’re holding her and the other girls. Sir, I have to say, they knew fuck all.’

  Brennan shook his head from left to right. ‘Not a hint?’

  ‘They were silly wee girls, just talk, y’know. Lou and me, we went through them till the wee hours. Got nothing. I think we’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  He was probably right, thought Brennan. If the victim wasn’t local, the chances of her knowing the girls that found her remains looked slim now. He said, ‘Wait for the lab boys. If you get the all-clear, let them go. But if there’s any dubiety, I want to know.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you warn them to keep their traps shut in front of the fucking press!’

  McGuire nodded. ‘Of course, sir.’

  Brennan told the DC to type up the interviews and have them on h
is desk by close of play, then, ‘Tell me about Carly’s parents, Stevie.’

  He moved forward, pulled out a chair. ‘Queer fish if you ask me.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Well, they’re your typical sheep-shaggers for a start – northerners, y’know. Full of religion.’

  ‘He’s a minister – I’d be surprised if they weren’t.’

  McGuire sat on the edge of the chair. ‘Nah, it’s more than that. There was a couple of times I thought he hushed her up, like she was going to say something he didn’t want to get out. They were very guarded, cautious.’

  Brennan leaned forward. He scratched his brow. ‘You think they’re not letting on about something?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . It was just a feeling I got.’

  Brennan had learned to trust those feelings. ‘Then we should get them on the rack.’

  McGuire seemed doubtful: ‘They were a nice couple.’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck, boy. Their daughter’s been killed – you know most victims know their murderers, don’t you?’

  McGuire looked at his hands, turned over his palms. ‘Yes, boss.’

  Chapter 20

  DC McGUIRE STOOD UP. He was turning for the door when it was suddenly flung open. Dr Lorraine Fuller stood in the jamb.

  ‘I’ll get you in the car park, Stevie,’ said Brennan.

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to call ahead?’

  The DI nodded. ‘Yes. Do that.’

  As McGuire left the office Lorraine walked towards Brennan’s desk. He offered her a seat. For a moment Brennan wondered if she was going to cause a scene, then he remembered who he was dealing with – Lorraine was far too collected for that kind of thing. Then there were the consequences; neither of them wanted black marks on their employment records at this stage.

  ‘Would you like something? A coffee, maybe?’

  ‘I’m not here for tiffin, Rob.’ She lowered herself onto the office chair, crossed her legs. Brennan noticed her calf – she had very defined muscles.

  ‘If it’s about last night . . .’

  ‘You know bloody well what it’s about.’