The Storm

by Neil Broadfoot

  And a warning. You came from this. Don’t go back, the picture screamed.

  By the time he had showered and dressed, the sun had rolled back the stage curtain. The sky was cool and clear, heavy with the promise of another day of fine weather that put Charlie’s teeth on edge. Sun in Edinburgh at this time of year meant only one thing. Tourists. And with the High Court sitting across the road from St Giles’ Cathedral on the Mile, that meant he’d have to dodge clumps of the camera-wielding, chattering idiots on his way. He sighed. A small price to pay.

  He left the flat and started to walk into town. It would take him about an hour and it was uphill all the way, but Charlie enjoyed the time, and the chance to put his thoughts in order. By the time he reached the court, he would be warmed up and ready for action.

  He headed up North Junction Street, passing a pub that was already open for business. Caught a whiff of stale beer and old cigarette smoke cut with the harsh tang of cheap whisky and thought, as he always did, of his dad. Slumped in his chair in the living room, beer belly spilling over his trousers after it was released from the prison of his starched uniform shirt, jacket and hat discarded on the dining table at the back of the room. PC Edward Montgomery. Local bobby and pillar of the community. Lousy father, insipid adulterer and alcoholic. He had died three years ago, a massive stroke taking him out of the confused misery of dementia he had lived in for the last fifteen years. Charlie wished he had lived a little longer. He hadn’t suffered enough.

  Reaching the top of Leith Walk, Charlie kept climbing, passing St James Centre on his right and then turning along Princes Street, which was, as ever, choked with buses, taxis and cars. He turned left at Princes Street Gardens, just as a tram slid by, already busy with commuters. Charlie watched it for a moment. He had fought against the trams, taken the council to court over them, commented in the stories that decried them as “Edinburgh’s shame” and “Capital’s billion-pound folly”. And yet, now that they were running, they were an accepted, even grudgingly loved, part of life in Edinburgh. They were busy every day, and there was even talk now of finishing what had been started and extending the line all the way down to Leith. Charlie smiled. Let them. It would clear the streets for him in the morning and, who knows, there might be a few cases in it for him as well.

  He walked down to Market Street then turned up as if his destination was the Mound, heading for the News Steps that cut up the hill and led to the back of the court. He was heading for the small café that sat on the side street beside the court. It was a rarity in Edinburgh for two reasons – it wasn’t a high street chain and it served food that was actually fresh and not vacuum-packed. Charlie took the stairs two at a time, mentally putting the finishing touches to Kevin Malcolm’s defence. He smiled slightly, pleased by his plan to use “psychological trauma” and the stupid little shit’s drug problems as justifications for his actions. It wouldn’t get him off, but it would hopefully cut time served. Which Charlie would take as a victory.

  So what if a violent little ned with anger management issues was back on the streets early? He would win the case. And that was all that mattered.

  He was so engrossed that he almost didn’t see the figure on the landing about halfway up the staircase, where it twisted around to follow the contour of the hill. Swaddled in a dirty blanket and backed into the corner with head down to their knees, he had almost thought it was a pile of rubbish in front of him. He moved to the other side of the stairs to avoid any pleas for change and bounded to the landing, reached out to put his hand on the rail to steady himself before launching himself onto the last flight of stairs and…

  The agony was sudden and complete, flashing through him as though the handrail had been electrified. He looked down, eyes bulging with incomprehension at the knife that had been plunged into the top of his hand. He staggered back as he reflexively tried to pull his hand away, felt blackness rush in as a fresh wave of cold agony lanced up his arm as the blade ground against bone. A hot, clammy hand clamped around his throat and squeezed, throttling his scream and making his eyes bulge in air-starved terror as steely fingers dug into his windpipe.

  “Hi Charlie,” a shrill voice whispered in his ear, hot with hatred and breathless with effort and excitement. “Nice to see you again after all this time. Got a wee message for you.”

  The fingers dug into Charlie’s windpipe more forcefully as the knife was wrenched free from his hand in a rocking, twisting motion, the sound of bones splintering echoing in his ears.

  A sharp kick to the back of the knees buckled his legs, and he felt crushing weight as his attacker bore down on him and forced him to the ground. A sudden moment of freedom as the figure backed off. Charlie hugged his ruined hand close to him, hot blood plastering his shirt to his chest, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “Wha…?” he croaked through his ruined throat, the effort excruciating. “Wha…?”

  The kick whipped his head back, dark stars exploding in front of his eyes as blood flew from his nose in a spattering arc. He fell backwards, crying out as he hit the cold stone stairs. Soft laughter in front of him. Taunting.

  Pain exploded in his midsection, white and flaring, as a boot was driven into his stomach. He gasped, choking and gagging, eyes bulging in terror as blood roared in his ears and he tried to breathe with lungs that felt like deflated balloons. The next kick was harder, his attacker grunting with effort. He screamed through blood-stained teeth as he felt a rib snap like a brittle twig.

  “Wh…” he gasped, tongue jabbing against jagged stumps of broken teeth as he tried to speak, his breathing a ragged hiss. “Wh… why are…?”

  A face suddenly filled his blurring, dimming vision. A nightmare leering at him from the past, carrying rational thought away with it on a crushing tide of terror and panic.

  “Here’s the message,” the nightmare whispered, holding up a glinting object and rolling it in the weak morning light. “Hope you like it.”

  Something cold was jammed into Charlie’s mouth, blunt needles of pain gouging into his gums as it clattered off his ruined teeth. More punches now, driving the last air from his chest as the darkness rushed in and wrapped itself around him like a warm blanket. Charlie dove for it, feeling the pain ebb, replaced by cool numbness as he drifted…

  …drifted…

  Pain screamed from his scalp as his head was wrenched back by the hair and he was dragged back to his knees. A bolt of scalding ice lanced across his throat and he clawed for it instinctively. Blood erupted from the wound in a torrent, spattering the walls and the dirty concrete. The world began to list and sway, almost as if he was on a boat at high tide. He was looking back down the stairs he had just come up, the stairs that led all the way down to Market Street.

  And suddenly he was flying. Tumbling head over heels, bones snapping and disintegrating as he hit the stairs and bounced. On the landing above, the nightmare watched with cold amusement.

  He came to rest about three quarters of the way down, legs and arms jutting out at unnatural angles, blood from the stab wounds to his chest starting to glisten as it seeped into the dark material of his perfectly tailored suit.

  The nightmare bounded down to him, checked briefly for a pulse. Found a weak one thrumming in his ruined neck.

  “Fra… Frankie…” Charlie coughed around the object in his mouth, blood spilling from what was left of his lips.

  “Yes, Charlie, that’s right. Frankie,” the nightmare whispered.

  The knife was driven into Charlie’s brain just at the temple, a quick, sudden stab, the sound of a dozen eggs being cracked at once. He made a grunting snort then collapsed forward – air driven from his lungs in a wheeze as his body hit the concrete and bounced slightly. He twitched once, weakly, then was still, the smell of shit rising into the air as his bowels gave way, mingling with the sound of soft, contented laughter.

  15

  Doug let out a burp that was
part wind, part nausea, and fought back the sudden wave of acidic bile that clawed at the back of his throat. The whisky last night had been a very bad idea. He took a quick swig of Coke then grasped the wheel tightly, pushed down on the accelerator a little harder. Driving faster would force him to concentrate more, get him there more quickly. Take his mind off Greig.

  Pick a lie, any lie, he thought.

  He still couldn’t quite believe Harvey had got in touch, after all these years.

  Who is he? Susie had asked after he put the phone down. The response that flashed through his mind was, The man who made me who I am today. And though it was a cliché it was, at its core, true.

  Harvey Robertson was senior reporter at the Capital Tribune when Doug started there on work experience. It began as a fortnight, part of his HND course. Thanks to Harvey, it became a career. Doug was assigned to shadow Harvey, who was to “show him the ropes”. From the start, Harvey liked him. While he made Doug do the usual gopher-jobs – “shit-end-of-the-stick duty” as Harvey called it – such as getting the coffees, going on the lunch run or getting the papers, he also made sure Doug was involved in the process of putting a paper out. Thanks to Harvey, Doug spent time with all the departments in the Tribune, from advertising and subs to backbench, newsdesk, reporters and even conference. He gave him the big picture.

  And to Doug, it was a revelation. He’d been born to his parents ten years too late. It wasn’t their fault, blame late marriage and hectic careers, but it marked him out as different from the start. He was always the least fashionable kid in class; as fashions and haircuts changed around him, he was always dressed in a range of sensible cords, jeans and smart shirts. Hardwearing shoes as, after all, “trainers were only for gym class”. His haircut was a copy of his dad’s – slicked back, hacked into submission by the local barber, an amateur who inherited the business from his own father and kept it going on a clientele of pensioners and kids whose parents didn’t see the sense in paying any more than the price of a round at the bar for a haircut.

  At school, Doug was a social misfit – the quiet, badly dressed kid in the corner who kept his mouth shut, blushed when a girl spoke to him and squinted out at a world he loathed from behind a pair of cheap NHS prescription glasses. He had cried when the optician said he needed glasses to read the board in class: it was just another reason for him to be picked on by the “cool kids”.

  So when he told his parents – his father an accountant and his mother a nurse – that he wanted to be a journalist and write for a living, the response was predictable.

  “That’ll no’ happen, son.”

  “Get a proper job, you can do better than that,”

  “Why don’t you go work with your father?”

  It was a leap too far for them. They were practical people whose son wanted to follow an impractical career. They tolerated it when they saw how focused he was, but Doug could almost feel the disappointment radiating from them over his “silly choice” and the ruined dreams of Dr Doug prowling the wards of the ERI, or Douglas McGregor QC, scourge of the Scottish courts.

  But with Harvey, it wasn’t silly any more. This was serious work being done by professionals, back when newspapers were run by people who judged a paper and its content by more than what it cost the publisher to produce.

  Doug poured his heart into the work experience placement and, when it was over, Harvey pulled a few strings and got him his first journalism job, subbing the obits for the Tribune.

  The pay was shit and the hours terrible, but Doug didn’t care, he was doing what he wanted, with people who thought about writing and language the same way as he did.

  Over time he became a general reporter and, again, Harvey took him under his wing. Taught him the tricks of the trade: how to get into a story, how to work the angles, who to make contacts of, who to make friends with, who to watch closely. Made him work on his shorthand for endless hours until he got it right and, incredibly, legible.

  “There are no new stories, Doug, just new angles,” he had said once when they were enjoying a traditional lunchtime pint in a small pub tucked up a back alley just off the Royal Mile. “The trick is finding the angle, and making it work for you.”

  When Harvey got wind that Andrea McKenzie, the crime reporter who had taken over from him at the Tribune, was moving on to the small screen, he pushed Doug to take the NCTJ exams he needed to get the job. At first Doug had shied away from it, terrified, if he were honest, that he wasn’t up to it. But Harvey kept pushing him until, eventually, he relented.

  And, sure enough, by the time Andrea appeared on her first six o’clock bulletin, sporting a makeover so striking it made Doug wish he had paid more attention to her when they worked together, he was sitting at her old desk, the newly appointed crime reporter for the Capital Tribune.

  Harvey had retired about six years ago, sickened by what he called the “bean-counters who were cutting the guts out of the industry”. When there was a redundancy offer at the Tribune he took it, and ploughed the money in to a small bed and breakfast on the Isle of Skye. It was where he had met his wife, Esther, years ago while on holiday, and he “always wanted to go back for the women and the great beer”.

  Doug hadn’t heard from him since. Until last night.

  “Sorry it took so long to track you down, Douglas,” he had said, his voice as soft and even as ever. “Saw the story on the news, called the Trib, got Walter. He told me what happened. Didn’t for a second think you’d be in morning conference, thought I’d taught you better than that.”

  “Aye, fair enough, should have known better. Sorry.”

  “What you sorry for, Doug? Just means I get some great first-person stuff to sell to the agencies.”

  “Fuck off, you’re no’ getting a quote from me.”

  Doug heard an inhale on the other end of the line, pictured Harvey taking a draw on the cheap, gnarled old pipe he thought made him look distinguished.

  “Look, Doug. Esther’s worried sick about you, and I’m no’ so happy about all this myself. You know it’ll be a shitstorm there for the next few days, so how do you fancy coming and seeing us for a bit? I’ll show you some of the women and let you drink some of the beer.”

  “Really? That… that would be great Harvey. Thanks, thanks a lot.”

  “So we’ll see you tomorrow? I take it finding the place won’t be too much of a leap for a crime reporter as good as you?”

  “Tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Give Esther my love, too. See you.”

  He had clicked off the phone, feeling like a drowning man who had just been thrown a life jacket. Tried to tell Susie about Harvey and what had happened. She’d laughed off the offer of a trip to Skye, wondering why he didn’t find it funny.

  The feeling of relief the call had given him lasted all the way back to Musselburgh and the living room of his flat. Sitting there, thoughts of Greig’s death pressed in on him, clawing, insistent, demanding attention like a petulant child.

  The terror in his eyes as the blood gushed from his neck…

  Look at me.

  Greig whipped round by the force of the first shot…

  Look at me.

  The way his knees buckled and he collapsed, cracking his skull open on the table…

  LOOK AT ME.

  The whisky was poured and in his hand before he knew it. He drank about a quarter of the bottle in a hopeless attempt to drown out the thoughts and images before he passed out from sheer nervous exhaustion, only to wake up in his chair cold and stiff and hungover.

  And now, here he was, feeling like he was about to puke any at moment and hammering the car up the road to the Isle of Skye, his mind full of questions about Greig, the future, Susie, Rebecca.

  Pick a lie, any lie, he thought again as he urged the car even faster.

  16

  By the time Susie arrived at the scene, Burns was already ther
e with the usual supporting cast of detectives, uniforms and scenes of crime officers. Police cordon tape rustled in the fresh morning air, glinting occasionally as it caught the light.

  She nodded a greeting to the uniforms who were standing at the bottom of the staircase, where Burns had told her to come when he called her ten minutes ago. Which was odd. It would have been easier just to step out of the court, round the side and onto the News Steps that way, rather than coming all the way round then down Market Street, but she wasn’t in the mood to argue. Blame too much wine last night with Doug.

  She pushed through the growing scrum of gawkers, tried to stay out of shot of the photographers and cameramen who had arrived, ducked under the tape and started up the staircase, yesterday’s gym session setting off dull pain in her legs and butt as she moved. Ahead, Burns spotted her and moved to meet her.

  “Morning, sir,” she said, noticing the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. The outdoors didn’t suit him, especially when stairs and bright sunlight were involved. His natural habitat was the CID suite or the pub, best viewed under artificial light.

  “Drummond,” Burns growled. “What do you know?”

  “Not much more than you told me, sir. Victim was found by a female heading for the National Library on George IV Bridge. Her screams alerted an officer heading for the court at the top of the steps, he radioed it in about thirty minutes ago.”

  “Hmm. Hmm.” Burns nodded agreement. “And you’ve not heard any chatter on the radio about this yet?”

  “No sir, I’ve not checked it. Why? Should I have?”

  Burns grunted. “No real reason. Except it wasn’t quite as routine as you said. You see, young PC Burnett, who responded to the screams, recognised the victim. Got a bit agitated when he made the call to Control. I’m pulling the recording to beat him to death with later, but I think the phrase he used was, ‘Someone’s kebabed Charming Charlie Montgomery’.”

  Susie felt her mouth drop open, shock hitting her in the stomach like a left jab. Her head darted up to where a knot of forensic officers dressed in their white jumpsuits were wrestling with a pop-up tent behind another length of police tape that had been draped across the width of the staircase. She couldn’t see the body.