‘Right, gang, let’s take a breather.’ Davies decided to call time on today. He wanted them all fresh in the morning.
He sat alone in his office, knowing that they now had a potential list of thousands of men who’d had a grudge against Harry Nugent, and a serious grudge at that. That man had used his position to groom and abuse vulnerable kids in his care. By the look of things it had been an open secret; what Davies couldn’t get his head round was the fact that no one seemed to stand up and be counted. This city, this country and its obsession with football made gods out of the most vile creatures and it sickened him.
He looked at the clock and decided he was off duty. There was cold beer in his fridge back home, but he couldn’t go back to his flat just yet. He needed to decontaminate himself from the day and what it had thrown up. He rested against the back of his chair and closed his eyes. Just for a moment. The buzz from his phone woke him. Darkness had fallen and his office had grown cold.
Hey handsome, you free for a drink?
He grinned when he saw the text from Oonagh. He’d been deliberately keeping his distance from her and she was guessing something was wrong. But he was too old for this game. Too old to fancy someone out of his league. She’d made it obvious from the get-go that she saw him as nothing more than a pal, but tonight that was all he needed: a pal.
As long as you’re buying…
But there was no such thing as a free drink. She’d be pressing him for info. He toyed with sticking a wee smiley face emoji on the end of his text. Just to show how pally he was, but decided against it. Shit, when did life get so fucking complicated that even sending a text was a social minefield?
They’d agreed to meet in the bar just off Bank Street, not far from his flat. That meant he could drive home and park up, leaving him free to get smashed. He didn’t imagine it would take much to persuade Oonagh to have a skinful and he felt a smile tug at his lips.
19
The flat was tucked away in the affluent suburb of Newton Mearns. Art deco by design, the block would have stood out like a sore thumb in a street dominated by Victorian sandstone villas and post-war bungalows had it not been hidden away in what an estate agent would have described as a gated and tranquil landscaped garden.
The gates appeared to open automatically as Oonagh drove towards them and she drew up outside the main entrance, pulling into a space marked ‘Visitor Parking’. She’d hardly had time to press the buzzer when a soft click told her the door was open. In a city obsessed by its art deco past, this was impressive. A central stairway dominated the communal entrance, curving its way up the main body of the building. Full length windows at either side flooded the entire space with light. She’d decided to ditch the lift and walk up the two flights of stairs admiring the view. Sarah Nugent opened the door before Oonagh had a chance to knock. She looked different somehow. Dressed very simply in a black polo neck and black jeans tucked into knee-high boots, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. It was only when she started to speak that Oonagh realised this was the first time she’d seen her sober.
‘Nice place.’
Sarah looked around, but didn’t bother feigning surprise; she knew this little pied-à-terre was far from humble. ‘Harry had several properties,’ she said. ‘Bought them over the years. Couldn’t resist them.’ The way she said it was as though Harry had bought luxury flats the way other people bought designer shoes. ‘This was the one he kept for himself.’ Oonagh followed her into the lounge. ‘I’d offer you coffee, but I’m out of milk.’
Oonagh guessed Sarah Nugent wasn’t really in the coffee making mood and just wanted to get down to business. ‘You’re looking well,’ she said. But Sarah sat forward, resting her elbows on her knees, nodding quickly for Oonagh to get to the point.
‘So, how much did you know?’ It was subtext for did you know your husband was abusing young boys.
‘About what?’ Either Sarah Nugent was taking the piss, or doing a remarkable job of playing the dumb blonde routine.
‘About what?’ Oonagh struggled to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘About your dead husband.’ She needed to keep her temper in check, she had to keep this woman on her side. ‘Bloody hell, Sarah, you’d hardly have invited me here just to go over the same ground as the other day.’ It suddenly struck Oonagh that perhaps Sarah Nugent couldn’t quite remember their last meeting with the same clarity that Oonagh did. After all, she’d been pretty smashed.
‘Not as much as you think.’ She paused. ‘But I sort of guessed where his tastes lay.’
Oonagh’s hand balled into a fist. Once again she wanted to scream, but kept as calm as she could and simply asked, ‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’
Sarah Nugent looked up and let out a laugh. ‘The police? I thought it was just young men he liked.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t realise the boys were underage.’
Oonagh had no idea if she was telling the truth or not.
‘You need to believe me.’
Oonagh was struggling with that.
‘Sarah, whatever you tell me, it’ll be in confidence. I swear nothing will get out unless you give me the go-ahead.’ The woman didn’t look convinced. Journalists weren’t known for their honest reputation and Oonagh had a job on her hands. But she reckoned this woman wanted to talk. Otherwise she wouldn’t have got this far.
‘Harry had a lot to hide.’
Oonagh’s eyes widened as she anticipated what was coming next, but Sarah didn’t continue. It was obvious she’d need to push her along. ‘More witnesses will come forward, Sarah. Was it just an open secret?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘It’s hard to explain. He was just this really popular nice guy on the outside and a fucking monster on the inside.’
‘Why didn’t you leave?’ As soon as she said it Oonagh could have bitten her tongue off. Abuse came in many guises and it wasn’t always easy to walk away.
‘I tried. Once.’
‘And?’
‘What you need to understand is that Harry Nugent was more than just a guy. He was a brand. A product. The whole package, and that meant happily married family man, good PR, squeaky clean image. That image paved the way for him to ride roughshod over anyone he abused.’
‘What I can’t get my head round is how Harry managed to get away with it all for so long. Someone had to have had his back here.’
‘Harry had a lot of friends, in a lot of places.’ Sarah paused. ‘A lot of dirt on a lot of very important people.’
‘Very cryptic, Sarah, but I need a bit more than that. Please, this is your chance to set the story straight.’
This time she laughed, really laughed. ‘You’ve got to be joking. If I come out with that, can you imagine the number of die-hard fans that would turn on me? They loved Harry. And those who didn’t would turn on me for not handing him in in the first place. Either way I’d be put through the wringer and hung out to dry. Bloody hell, I’d be as well being on house arrest.’
Oonagh wasn’t buying it, but guessed she’d best leave that line for now. Sarah had her back against the wall and didn’t look as if she was ready to budge. ‘I take it the police have taken a full statement now?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve told them what I know. Which wasn’t much really.’
‘OK, you help me, and I’ll help you.’ Oonagh hated using this line but it was the only one she thought would work at this stage. ‘You know this particular brand of shit will hit the fan. And when it does, if there’s even a whiff that you knew then you’ll be thrown to the wolves. People are going to point the finger whether you like it or not.’ Oonagh wasn’t bullshitting, she’d seen it before. A hundred times. It was too late for people to get their pound of flesh from Harry Nugent, so they’d make do with his widow instead. She’d badgered Alec last night when they’d met for a drink. Pushed him to tell her if they’d found anything on Nugent’s laptop. He was too long in the tooth to let anything slip, everything he didn’t tell her was deliberate
. But he left her in no doubt what they’d uncovered. It had sickened him to the core.
What kind of woman could share her bed every night with such a monster? That was what would be coming next, as soon as the police issued a press release. ‘This isn’t going to go away, Sarah. You need a way to manage this. Damage limitation.’
Sarah dropped her head into her hands; everything was turning sour around her. Oonagh leaned forward, touched the arm of her chair. ‘I can’t promise you’ll come out smelling of roses, but hopefully you won’t be stinking of the brown smelly stuff either.’
Sarah sniffed and tilted her head back slightly, mindful that her mascara was in danger of running if those tears spilled over.
‘And I hate to say it, but in my opinion, given what they now know about your husband, the police won’t be busting a gut to find his killer.’ She couldn’t be certain, but something that may have been relief flashed across Sarah’s face.
Oonagh decided to change tack slightly. ‘When you worked at Breakmire, did you know Hannah Gray?’
Sarah stopped chewing the skin around her thumb and stroked the back of her neck. ‘No. I don’t think so…’
‘She was a patient there.’ Oonagh filled her in on the basic details. ‘Ran away, was found dead in the grounds.’
The penny seemed to drop. ‘I do remember. Yeah. That happened a few weeks before I started. But people were talking about it. Why?’
‘No reason. Her name came up when I was researching Breakmire.’
Sarah narrowed her eyes.
‘I was trying to get a handle on why Harry was so keen to help out there. Let’s face it, we now know he wasn’t as altruistic as we’d all thought so—’
‘Do journalists have to take some sort of… pledge, or an oath or something?’ Sarah cut her off before she had the chance to finish. Oonagh wasn’t quite sure if she was taking the piss, pretending to be more naïve than she actually was, but whatever her motive Oonagh guessed she was asking if she could keep a secret.
‘It’s complicated. If the police get a warrant for information they believe I have, then I have no option but to hand it over. But until then, whatever I uncover investigating a story is my business.’
‘I can trust you, then?’
‘To be honest, Sarah, I think right now I’m your best bet.’
20
Tommy Gallagher 1983
He lay perfectly still. Certain that his sister could hear his heart beating from across the room, loud against his chest, his shame washing over him like a blanket.
‘You awake, Tommy?’ He ignored her high pitched whisper, instead breathing deeply to let on he was asleep. ‘I’m cold, can I come in beside you?’ He didn’t get the chance to say no, as her gentle footsteps ran softly across the lino and she slipped in under the covers, cuddling into his back. He closed his eyes tight, stemming the tears. If he cried, she’d feel it; Ellie would know something was wrong. She’d never seen her big brother cry. Even when Dad died he’d made sure he’d held it in, rocking her back and forth to sleep each night as she’d cried herself to sleep in his arms. He felt her cold feet on his legs through his pyjama trousers, and her wee hand clung onto his jacket, gripped at his chest as she cooried in for warmth.
Tommy patted his sister’s hand, let her know he was awake, but not up to talking. Soon her breathing grew shallow and it wasn’t long before he felt her body lean heavier against him as she drifted off into sleep. He tried to let his tears flow with the rhythm of his breathing in case he woke her. He wondered if Dad could see him. Wondered if he knew. His stomach lurched at the thought as he drifted in and out of fitful sleep.
21
The noise of the traffic on Great Western Road made its way through the open window of his third floor flat. When he’d first moved here it had seemed so peaceful, so tranquil, he’d hardly noticed any outside noise at all. It was the first place he could seriously call home since the divorce, and perhaps that was what had given him a sense of peace.
Alec looked down onto the street below; students filed their way along the pavement, meandering onto the road towards the university. He wondered which, if any, of them harboured secrets. That was often the case if he was at a crowded event – he’d scan the faces and try to guess how many criminals were out roaming the streets. How many undetected killers, rapists, abusers were free to go about their daily lives without even a hint of their misdemeanours. The same with victims; there must be thousands of people out there who’d suffered, and were still suffering, yet for whatever reason they felt they couldn’t come forward. They were the ones the cops had failed. And if those victims were just kids then they’d been let down even more.
Trying to get his head round the fact that there were no recorded complaints against Harry Nugent from any of the forces sickened him. Even if Toria was right, and it pointed more to incompetence than corruption on the force, he wasn’t letting this one go. Those poor kids, those boys who’d asked for help and were let down, they deserved better.
He sat on the window ledge drinking his coffee, the cold breeze catching the gap on his back between his T-shirt and jammie bottoms. He should really get dressed, he had a shitload of work to do, but needed just a few moments of peace here. He took his eyes from the street and looked around the living room. The flat was adopting a very unlived in look and didn’t really seem like home any more; hardly surprising considering how little time he spent here. Everything had gone so fast: life, the job, his marriage. Twenty years ago he thought he had all the time in the world, then one day, you woke up and realised there were more years behind you than there were in front. He used to laugh when his dad had told him that. How everything would just pass by in a blur, ‘so make the bloody most of it, son,’ he’d said. Still said it when he visited.
Loneliness wasn’t a word that he ever felt applied to him – he enjoyed his own company, for the most part couldn’t be arsed with other people – but sometimes, occasionally, it would be nice, he thought, to have someone to come home to. Someone to offload and share the day with. But that wasn’t really an option for him. But someone to be there occasionally wasn’t really an option either, and who the hell in their right mind would be willing to listen to what he had to offload at the end of a working day? A mind polluted with all the horrors that life had to give. But more and more recently he’d been aware of a gap in his life. Something was missing. Whether that gap was Oonagh O’Neil shaped was hard to tell. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind; there were a million reasons that one wouldn’t work.
Alec swallowed the remainder of his coffee and walked over to the small kitchen tagged onto the edge of the living room and rinsed his cup, leaving it on the unit above the dishwasher he’d never used. Hardly seemed worth it for one cup and the occasional plate. No one had shared this space since he’d moved in five years ago, and the likelihood was that no one ever would. But that was cool. His wasn’t a life suited to sharing. He was fine with that, and on a reasonable day could even be considered happy – well, as happy as a grumpy bastard with a recurring ulcer who hadn’t had sex for eighteen months had a right to be.
He drove north, edging out of the city towards Possilpark. Saracen Street had changed so much since he was a kid. It was still the main shopping thoroughfare, but now it seemed little more than a ghost of its former self. Redevelopment had resulted in many of the old red sandstone tenements being destroyed and locals being rehoused elsewhere. The once thriving Saracen Foundry was long gone too, had been from before his time. The entire area had initially grown up around the foundry, which had been famous for manufacturing the best ornamental ironwork in Scotland. But within fifteen years of its closure, those with a more enterprising gene had spotted a gap in the market, and Possilpark had become the hub of one of the most thriving heroin markets in the country.
Alec remembered his time as a young copper there with little fondness. He’d spent much of his beat catching petty dealers and mopping up the mess left by users, knoc
king on doors of bewildered families to tell them their son wouldn’t be coming home that night but would they mind identifying his body instead. All this while the big names behind the problem, the high-end dealers, the drug barons, got off scot-free. Glasgow’s economic history seemed to be steeped in similar shame: tobacco lords trading from the money they made as slave traders, industrialists thriving off the labour of the slum dwellers, and now drug barons, too big and too anonymous for the cops to catch.
He took a left just past the health centre and pulled over, double-checking the address on his mobile before walking into the close. He’d considered bringing Toria with him, not quite as a family liaison officer, but he knew that the presence of a female officer could soften the atmosphere. But she was up to her eyes in it, as was the whole team; anyway, this was an informal chat and that would be enough for now.
Scott Pettigrew had been one of the boys who’d made a claim against Nugent back in the day, almost thirty years ago. But it wasn’t Scott Alec had arranged this interview with, it was his mum.
‘They must be right feart sending a big noise like you.’ Wilma Pettigrew looked him up and down as he stood on the doorstep, then shuffled through the narrow hallway to the living room, expecting him to follow. She bore the hallmark trait of the Glaswegian Wifie: took no shit from no one.
Alec gave her a smile that was lost somewhere in the back of her cardigan. ‘I’m hardly a big noise, but…’ He knew what she meant. This woman was no fool and obviously realised that cops of Alec’s rank didn’t really do house calls to lonely old women unless they needed to make an impression.
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