The Storm

by Neil Broadfoot

  “What? Sir? You don’t mean?”

  “Oh yes, Drummond, I do. Go and have a look for yourself. Hope you didn’t have a big breakfast though, he’s in a hell of a state.” Susie searched Burns’s face for any trace of gallows humour. When she didn’t find it, her stomach gave another queasy lurch.

  She climbed the last of the stairs, pain in her legs forgotten, until she reached the second, inner cordon that was designed to protect the immediate crime scene. She peered over, the forensics staff shuffling out of her way to give her a clear view. Swallowed back the sudden tang of bile in her throat as she looked down at the dead eyes of Charming Charlie Montgomery.

  It took a force of will to tear her eyes from the knife that jutted out of his temple and consider the scene as a whole. His face was a ruin of blood and dusty-purple markings that looked like birthmarks. She realised with a sudden twist of revulsion that they were imprints from the boot that had been smashed into his face again and again. His nose was mashed against his cheek like a blob of plasticine, obviously broken by one or more of the kicks. His limbs were arranged at crazy, disorienting angles beneath him, broken and wrenched from their sockets by the fall. His perfect hair, which Susie noticed he always patted down at the back just before he made a comment in the courtroom, was ruffled and slick with blood and, Susie thought, flecks of bone.

  “What happened?” she asked, directing the question into the crowd of SOCOs. One of them Susie recognised, Amanda Paterson, who stepped closer to the cordon, picking her steps gingerly so she didn’t disturb anything.

  She nodded a small greeting, looked at the body again, then back up the stairs. “Best we can tell, he was stabbed on the landing halfway up – there’s a hell of a lot of blood up there and the spatter patterns and pooling show that’s where most of the damage was done. Looks like he was beaten up there too; there wouldn’t have been enough room to get the force into those blows on the steps here, too confined.”

  Susie saw a picture she didn’t want to look at form in her mind. Charlie being attacked, stabbed to the ground then beaten before…

  …before…

  She blinked rapidly to clear the image. “Then he was thrown down the stairs? That’s how he ended up here?”

  “Either that or he fell when trying to get away, yeah.” Amanda nodded, glasses winking. “But he was dead by the time he landed. No way anyone could survive that type of blood loss, even without the knife wound to the head.”

  Susie was dimly aware of Burns’s heavy breathing as he came to a stop beside her. Forced herself to focus on the job, screen out the acrid tang of blood in her nostrils and the caustic taste tickling her gag reflex at the back of her throat.

  “Robbery, sir? He fought back, attacker pulled a knife? Secluded staircase, just the place for a dumb shit to jump an unsuspecting passer-by.”

  “My first impression, too. But his wallet, watch and other personal belongings are still on the body. And besides, this was deliberate. Look at the knife – a simple mugger would have scarpered, not hung around and left the murder weapon. And whoever did this left us a message.”

  Susie felt her legs twitch, either to run or buckle, she wasn’t sure.

  “What message?” she asked, amazed how calm her voice sounded, especially as she was talking through numb lips.

  “Not sure yet. But the doc says something’s been rammed in his mouth. We’ll know more when he gets Charlie back to the lock-up for the post-mortem. But it’s not your average mugger’s MO now, is it?”

  “No sir,” Susie mumbled, “it’s not. But what…?”

  “Haven’t got a fucking clue,” Burns said, his voice heavy with disgust. “But that’s a journalist and a lawyer dead in the space of twenty-four hours. What’s next, a banker?”

  Susie glanced over his shoulder to the HQ of the Bank of Scotland that sat on the Mound, a massive, castle-like building that dominated the view over Princes Street.

  What next? Good question.

  She turned again, the Scott Monument coming into view. A flash of Charlie Morris leering over her, pushing a gun into her face. The terror. The impotence. She blinked rapidly, forced herself to breathe. Wished she had taken Doug up on his joke offer of a road trip after all.

  17

  The acid begins pumping through my legs and lower back ten miles outside of Dumbarton, so I pull into the first layby I can find and take a hit from the wrap. It races up my nose and stabs into my brain like a shard of hot ice, the warm, velvet perfection spreading through my body in a wave that carries away the pain and exhaustion.

  I sit slumped in the seat, hands resting on the steering wheel. Ruined, ancient things, skin the colour of wax stretched over gnarled knots of knuckle, mottled with nicks and scars and liver spots. They hurt every time I move them, wake me from my nightmares with bolts of searing agony if I clench them in my sleep.

  But still strong when they need to be. Still steady.

  Still killers.

  I muster the energy to haul myself forward and reach into the glove compartment for the map. It’s an old and tattered thing, just like me, but it serves its purpose. Right now, it’s camouflage, just in case an overly enthusiastic copper decides to take an interest in why I’ve stopped. I unfold it on the steering wheel and stare at it, colours blurring and running into one another as I let my eyes defocus and concentrate on my breathing. I don’t need to look at that map, I know exactly where I’m going.

  I grunt what passes for a laugh and feel a lazy smile play across my lips. “Over the sea,” I whisper in a voice I barely recognise as my own. It’s funny, I always wanted to see more of Scotland, but I never had the time.

  But I do now. And I have something more, something I’ve not had for a very, very long time.

  A mission to believe in.

  I blink my eyes back into focus, take another deep breath and flex my hands as I wriggle in the seat and get my legs moving. Not bad. The pain is there, as it always is, but the wrap has numbed the worst of it. I shake my head, make a mental note to pick up some Red Bull at the first service station I come across and get back on the road.

  I drive very, very carefully. Not too slowly, not too fast, just another driver on the tourist trail. I feel the urge to press the accelerator down, race to the goal and get on with the mission, but I resist it.

  Discipline. Patience. Control. I’ve waited this long. A little longer won’t hurt. I can see the end destination now – my arrival is as inevitable as the death and suffering I will bring.

  18

  The morgue was at the top of a slight hill overlooking the Cowgate, a small, squat building the police had nicknamed “the lock-up”. It was concrete-grey, listless and anonymous looking, just another utilitarian structure forced upon Edinburgh’s Old Town during the Seventies.

  Susie had always hated the building. The harsh, astringent whiff of disinfectant, the overly bright strip lights dancing over the tiles and chrome, the rooms kept cold for obvious reasons and, below it all, the feeling of death seeping from every surface.

  She was sitting in Dr Williams’ office, which was little more than a small anteroom off the main surgical bay where the post-mortems were carried out. She was nursing a bad coffee and a worse headache, and neither of them looked like they would improve in the near future.

  It had started at the CID suite after she had seen Charlie’s body. Burns had called a meeting and, as there were now two murders, divided up the detectives into teams for the Greig and Montgomery inquiries.

  Only one problem – Susie wasn’t on either team.

  She waited for the rest of the officers to file out of the room, counting very slowly and deliberately to ten in her head as she did, ignoring the dull ache from her jaw as she ground her teeth – an old habit that had cost her hours and hours in the dentist chair growing up.

  When the last of the officers had left, she walked
to Burns’s office. Paused at the door and knocked, trying not to imagine the noise the glass would make if she shattered it.

  One… two… three… fo-

  She was through the door and in the office before Burns’s barked “Come!” had faded from her ears.

  He was standing at the window in the corner, making a half-hearted attempt to disguise the butt of the cigarette he had just smoked. As with all public places these days, smoking in police premises was frowned upon, but the reek of old smoke and the nicotine stains that ran around the top of the dull magnolia walls like a scum ring in a dirty bath told another story.

  Observe the law. Just don’t always enforce it, Susie heard one of her lecturers whisper in her mind.

  Burns took a moment to look her over as he settled back into his chair. From the squealing it was making, Burns’s latest get-fit kick wasn’t going so well.

  “Drummond,” he said with a small nod at last, as if confirming that, yes, that was still her name. Arrogant prick. “Something I can do for you?”

  Susie settled her gaze on his, vowed not to look away. “The duty split, sir. I noticed I wasn’t assigned to either the Greig or Montgomery case. I was wondering if you could tell me why?”

  Burns contorted his features into what Susie guessed was his version of empathy and understanding. It looked more like he wasn’t getting enough fibre in his diet and the shit train was about three days late.

  “I thought we had been through this? I can’t put you on the Greig case, and you were a witness in the trial Charlie was working on when he died. So I can’t use you on either of them, can I? But there is something I need you to look at, a suspicious death at the ERI.”

  Susie felt cold fury prickle between her shoulders, fought to keep her breath even and her tone low. “With respect, sir, I don’t think that’s the best use of my expertise. You’ve got two high-profile murders in two days. I would have thought that…”

  “You would have thought?” Burns snapped, his eyes growing dark as his cheeks and neck flushed an angry purple. “And just who, Detective Sergeant, said that you were entitled to have a fucking thought or opinion about any of this? I’ve already told you that the high heidyins are looking at you very, very closely, so the last thing I need is for that to turn into problems on the Greig case. And you know as well as I do that you can’t investigate the death of a man who you were facing off against in court. So what exactly do you want me to do?”

  The words were out of Susie’s mouth before she could stop them, tumbling from her, each as hard as the lump in her throat and as acidic as the tears scalding her eyes. Fuck this. Fuck this right off.

  “How about you use me, sir… you know, let me do my actual job? I’m a good detective, I’ve shown that time and time again, even with all the shit and sneering behind my back. I put in the hours, do the job and get the results. I understand about Charlie’s case, but to keep me away from the Greig murder purely on the basis of my alleged connection to a reporter at the Tribune, who may or may not have witnessed the murder, and because of some scrutiny from senior officers is, frankly, cowardice. If I mess up, then I mess up and I’ll take responsibility for that. But if you want to sideline me then…”

  She let the sentence drift off, partly because she couldn’t be sure she could keep her voice level, and partly because she didn’t know what came next. She’d thought of quitting before, especially after the whole Christmas party nightmare and in the aftermath of the Buchan case. But would she?

  Could she?

  Burns slid a file from the corner of his desk in front of his looming gut, eyes never leaving Susie. His breathing was deep and heavy, almost like snoring and, for a moment, Susie was sure he was building up to an explosion. She was about to get the Third Degree Burns treatment, both barrels. The quitting question was about to be taken out of her hands.

  “Drummond,” he said, fiddling with the edges of the file as if he wanted to crush it into a ball at any second. His voice was flint: cold, unfeeling, razor sharp.

  “This is the file on the unexplained death at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Happened yesterday afternoon, got a little lost in the hoo-hah surrounding the Greig case. A twenty-two-year-old male, hospitalised with serious head injuries, found dead by his nurse. Williams is doing the post-mortem as a favour to the director of the hospital, an old colleague of his. So you will go and see Dr Williams and get his report. I suspect his office will be more welcoming than this place for the next few hours.”

  Susie gulped. So that was it, she was fucked. Might as well go all the way then. “Sir, I…”

  Burns raised a hand. “And when you have finished with Dr Williams, you will review all the statements from the Greig case, including that of Mr Douglas McGregor, see if King and co missed anything, offer your thoughts.”

  Susie let out a sigh, felt her legs go heavy from burned-out adrenalin. “Thank you, sir, I appreciate the opportunity to…”

  Burns waved his hand again, swatting away an imaginary fly. “Don’t give me the shit, Susie. You’re right, you’re a good copper, I should be using you, no matter what those fuckwits upstairs say. But one thing. Talk to me like that again, ever, and you won’t have to worry about the brass fucking your career over, understood?”

  She nodded, feeling like an over-grateful puppy. “Yes, sir. I apologise. And thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, Drummond. Get the fuck out of my sight. And get me some results.”

  Susie took the hint and headed straight for the morgue. So now she was sitting in Dr Williams’ office, waiting, hoping he had finished the business end of the day and she could just get his thoughts or, better yet, a first draft of his report.

  Her phone beeped. A text message from Rebecca. Hear you got assigned to the Greig case, congrats. Give me a call when you get a minute, need to go over lines, R.

  Susie clicked the phone off, downed the last of her coffee. Grimaced.

  Bitter and cold.

  19

  Doug’s hangover cleared just as he swung out of Kyle of Lochalsh and down onto the long sweep of road that took him over the Skye Bridge. He realised that he had been driving on autopilot most of the way, taking corners by instinct, ignoring the sparse, rugged beauty of Loch Lochy, Ben Nevis and the Cairngorms as he left Fort William and the towns and cities behind, the landscape seeming to decompress and stretch out to fill the horizon with stunning mountains that jutted defiantly into the sky.

  Instead, he spent the journey trying to think through the whisky-induced fug about what had happened. Tried to look at it rationally rather than as a witness. See it like any other story, just as Harvey had taught him to.

  Okay, so, the facts. Someone wanted Greig dead. Someone who was obviously a skilled sniper, able to shoot through a window and hit him twice dead centre with only three shots. But then that was a problem. If the killer was as proficient as Doug thought he was, why such a public killing? Why not just lie in wait for Greig down a quiet alley, or get him as he left the Trib at night under the cover of darkness?

  The answer was simple. Because whoever did this, didn’t want it to be a quiet death. Being splashy was the whole point. This was a message, clear and simple.

  But to whom? And what was the message?

  Doug sighed with frustration, hauled his mind back to the task of driving. Felt his hangover snarl again as the steep climb and pronounced camber of the Skye Bridge gave him a brief stab of vertigo and a stunning view of Loch Alsh below.

  He came off the bridge and followed the signs for Broadford. According to the map, Harvey’s hotel was on the Sleat peninsula, a bulge at the bottom of the island that pushed back out towards the mainland. And the best way to get there was to come off the bridge and head for Broadford. The road was quiet, better kept than Doug had been expecting, white-bricked homes and small knots of houses clustered together sliding by.

  His phon
e pinged and he reached for it, giving the road ahead a brief glance. Rebecca. Off the record, Susie on the Greig case. Speaking to her later. Rx

  He frowned, tossed the phone aside. He had called her this morning, apologised for not being in touch since the hospital, explained where he was going. What he didn’t explain was she was part of the reason for him deciding to go.

  It had started a couple of weeks ago, when Doug had been at a press briefing on a spate of pick-pocketings around Morningside. The MO was simple enough – identify a likely target, normally older and less likely to know what was going on until it was too late, jostle them on the street and grab their wallets and valuables in the confusion. Not original and, in the days of identity theft, cyber crime and card cloning, Doug had to admit a grudging admiration for the retro nature of the crimes.

  A couple of the incidents had been caught on CCTV cameras outside shops and in the streets, giving police a fairly good look at the suspects, hence the press briefing to get the word out, alert locals and try to track them down.

  So far, so routine. Except that, supporting the CID officers at the briefing was a new face. A face who wasn’t impressed by the antics of one Douglas McGregor, who was happily baiting DI Burns into an early heart attack by asking why Police Scotland couldn’t track down what looked like Morningside’s equivalent of Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger during the height of tourist season.

  Burns was just building to a truly volcanic explosion, Doug could tell by the way the colour was draining from his face as his neck turned scarlet, almost as if his tie was too tight and the blood was pooling around the blockage.

  Doug only felt a little guilty at goading Burns into giving a juicy quote – he was generally a good copper, but the way he was sidelining Susie on some of the bigger cases recently rankled.