Our Little Secrets

by Peter Ritchie

  They had all their team out knocking fuck out of Edinburgh’s housebreakers, trying to dig out whoever had committed this affront. They knew Hamilton would be doing his own thing, but they wanted to get the bastard first. Credibility was at stake.

  The only problem was that Tonto wasn’t answering his phone, and no one seemed to know where he was. Sean was hacked off because Tonto had been a good housebreaker in his time and would have been handy to have out there. The hours passed and Sean was close to blowing a circuit from spending so much time trying to find a member of his team who should have known what was going on.

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ nut the bastard when I find him, Paul,’ he said down the phone, ending the call as he walked into a close that stank like a jakey’s oxter.

  He was raging when he banged the door, and after two tries he opened the letter box. That’s when the piss artist on the next landing downstairs appeared again, and the guy didn’t know how to shut it. He’d learned nothing from the meeting with Frankie Mason – in fact he couldn’t even remember it. It was just part of his life as a pish-heid, waking up with strange bumps, cuts and bruises anywhere on his body.

  ‘Stop the fuckin’ noise up there or I’ll come up an’ kick fuck oot ye!’ He said it with real conviction and wasn’t quite fully pished so the words were clear enough to Sean Grainger, who didn’t need any incentive to go into action. His anger needed an outlet and the pish-heid had virtually called out ‘come on down and get some’.

  Grainger came down the stairs like a force of nature and didn’t even wait for the pish-heid to raise his fists. He cracked the head on him first, and as the man groaned then buckled, he hit him with another four good shots, two to the head and two to the body. The last two were received when the pish-heid was on the deck.

  Grainger felt just a little better and turned to head back up the stairs. The pish-heid managed to crawl back into his house then onto the sofa that was home to more bug life than the Amazon jungle. He groaned, ‘What a fuckin’ life,’ before swallowing the remains of a vodka bottle and staring at the TV, which was switched off.

  Grainger didn’t wait this time and crashed the door almost off its hinges. It was remarkable how quickly his senses told him to stay a moment as the heat and smell hit him like a blow to his chest.

  ‘What the fuck?’ He waited and the faint but heavy, sweet smell of corruption filled his nose and throat. The weather outside was mild, almost humid, and the heat was overwhelming. Sean Grainger was a hard bastard, but his instincts had warned him that something was wrong and he walked slowly, drawing the blade he always carried underneath his jacket.

  When he got to the living-area doorway he saw the back of the sofa facing him and Tonto’s head hanging to the side as if he was pished or in a heavy sleep. He knew he was dead, but he had no way of knowing what else was in the flat with him and took it slowly.

  He walked round to face Tonto, almost gagged and tried to pull open the window, but it was stuck fast with years of badly applied paint. The gas heater was going full blast, and although his instinct was to switch the bastard off, he didn’t want to touch more than he needed to, and he was a professional criminal – he knew the bizzies would be all over this at some point, joining the fucking bluebottles’ feeding frenzy. He’d already tried the window and forced his mind away from the horror to wipe down the handle he’d touched. At worst, he would always have an excuse for leaving a print in an employee’s flat.

  Tonto’s face was a bluish-grey colour; his tongue seemed swollen and protruded just beyond his lips. The empty syringe lay beside his hand.

  You fuckin’ idiot, Davy, he thought. He pulled out his phone, called Paul and told him what he’d found.

  ‘Touch fuck all, Sean, and get your arse out of there. When you get clear make a call to the bizzies from a call box where’s there’s no CCTV. No names – just that they need to get there pronto. Fuckin’ Police Scotland’ll probably take three days, but there you go. Fuckin’ idiot, that boy. Wonder why we took him on?’ Paul was already raging at events and this was another dollop of dog shit on the existing pile.

  In fact, the police didn’t answer the call straightaway – there was a backlog of calls almost overwhelming the force resources. It was only when the two junkies who lived next door came home in the early hours, saw the crashed door and thought there was a chance of a quick rob that the police became involved.

  The junkies went into the house, saw what Sean Grainger had seen and panicked. They did the right thing, because they knew the bizzies might blame them, and called the police, and after ten minutes of tortuous rambling and the realisation that the circumstances matched an earlier anonymous call, a car arrived and the uniforms started the wheels moving. It looked for all the world like just another OD, and there was drugs paraphernalia all over the house. The only problem was the wrecked door, and they handed it over to the suits to go through the motions. But it was a sudden death so there’d be a port-mortem anyway.

  The DOs had a look through the house and when the older detective opened the rucksack in the hallway, he felt the rush, plus a burn in his nostrils from the stink of the rancid vomit clinging to the balaclava. He saw the jemmy, the box and he was long enough in the tooth to realise they had themselves a full house. He’d read the intel from the murder squad.

  ‘Think we have ourselves a dead killer and the goodies,’ he crowed. ‘Ya fuckin’ beauty.’

  Within half an hour, the place was a mass of activity and the SOCOs were starting to examine every inch of the flat. The pish-heid in the flat below came out, threw a few punches at the uniforms and was locked up for assault and breach of the peace.

  Ronnie Slade had gone home for a break. His head was swimming with the day’s events and he realised he was spinning an awful lot of plates with the involvement of the Graingers and Arthur Hamilton. When he took the call, he wished he’d jumped in the shower as soon as he’d arrived home instead of chewing a fish supper. His fiancée was away on business and the thought of cooking had been too much, so he’d reverted to the staple diet of the police service.

  He arrived at Tonto’s flat and thought it looked good, but he knew in his water this case wasn’t straightforward, and when he took a call from the intel boys that the deceased had worked for Paul and Sean Grainger, he felt the fish supper gurgle deep in his gut. The death itself seemed to point straight at an OD, but there was still the why. The body was decomposing rapidly, although one of the DOs claimed to have passed Tonto in his car just two or three days earlier.

  The DOs who knew Tonto from the past said he was a good housebreaker in his time, but not known as a particularly violent type, so he must have gone into panic mode during whatever had happened at the locus. Probably thought an arm full of smack would put him in a better place, and it certainly did that as far as a few of the cops were concerned.

  Slade stared at the wrecked door and let his mind wander over what might have happened.

  ‘What’re the next-door junkies saying?’ he asked Lesley Thompson, who’d arrived before he had and had spoken to the smackheads, who were coming down hard and close to the gibberish stage. They’d been taken to Leith as witnesses, but Slade made sure their flat was treated as a crime scene, and when he saw the state of it, he found ‘crime scene’ was a perfect description. It was a typical junkie pit – a wall-to-wall tip – and the toilet was more dangerous than Syria on a bad day. He couldn’t rule out them being involved in whatever had happened to Tonto although he thought it unlikely. They seemed to be claiming that the door was caved in when they came home.

  ‘Work the evidence, Les.’ He knew that grinding through the evidence was an absolute necessity, and he never cut corners, no matter what his gut told him. Slade had already taken a call from the Assistant Chief Constable, who was happy as a pig in shit that it was solved and thought it a bonus that the killer was potted.

  ‘That’ll save a fucking fortune in court time so job done, Ronnie. Good man.’ The ACC was more be
an counter than policeman.

  ‘There might be complications, sir. Couple of things don’t make sense at the locus and we need to resolve them. You know the family connections of the deceased, so who can tell?’

  ‘You know, Ronnie, you just worry too much and need to stop seeing bogeymen where they don’t exist. Get this wrapped up. There’s a million other things to do, like getting the arrest figures up.’ The phone went dead without another word.

  Slade shook his head, but he was a pragmatist and knew it was just the way of the world to have leaders driven by numbers.

  ‘God help us,’ he said to no one but himself.

  He got a hold of a couple of DOs who were outside and told them to talk to Dominic Grainger, whether he was sleeping or not, to identify the box. There was always the possibility of a horrible coincidence and that the box in Tonto’s bag could turn out to be nothing to do with the murder.

  ‘Work the evidence, Ronnie,’ he said again.

  The two detectives went to the hotel where Grainger was half-drunk but wide awake and staring at the ceiling, his mind heating up with the mixture of alcohol and stress. There were still spikes of elation, similar to that moment when the roulette croupier spun the wheel and he’d put more than he could afford on those random numbers. Those numbers that any sane man knew did no favours for anyone. It was all that, but amplified by the fact that this gamble could either solve his problems or ruin him.

  It was more than ruin. Get this one wrong, Dominic, and you’re fucking dead, son, he heard over and over in his head as he moved between elation and near panic, picturing what might happen either way.

  When the phone rang, he jerked as if a gun had been put to his head. It was the detectives and they wanted to see him. Grainger was sweating already in the clammy air of the hotel room. His instinct was to put them off, but he had no way of knowing what they wanted. Maybe it was to arrest him. Maybe it was to tell him about Tonto. Who the fuck knew?

  ‘Give me five minutes and come up.’

  He had no choice. He headed to the bathroom and filled the sink with cold water then lowered his face into it, hoping it would tighten the slack skin that had appeared below his eyes. He held it there for as long as he could until his lungs were bursting and lifted his head, staring into the mirror, where he saw the wife killer looking back at him. Jude’s face came back to him; she’d said ‘please’ twice before he killed her.

  He went back to the bed, picked up the empty miniatures and stuck them in the wastebasket, but the heavy, sweet stink of a drunk’s breath was in the air and he knew it.

  His head snapped back when the heavy knock told him they were at the door. They came into the room and he saw them looking for anything that might say guilty. The detectives’ eyes were never still as they examined the room, and he knew it would all be reported back. They looked at each other for a moment as the stink of booze and sweat hit their noses. What were they thinking? Did they sense his guilt?

  ‘What can I do for you?’ It was difficult to hold the act because it had never occurred to him how lonely it would be carrying the knowledge of what he’d done. He was capable of almost anything, but it had always been for the family business or just slapping some female a bit when it was necessary. This was a new place.

  ‘We wanted to show you a picture of a jewellery box we’ve recovered to see if you recognise it.’

  Grainger held his breath. If they’d found Tonto then maybe his plan would start to come together. It was irrational, but he’d worried that no one would give a fuck about Tonto and he’d be one of those tragic souls who’d lie for months. It was a crazy thought, because with the heat in the room, they’d have to evacuate the building in a few days with the smell and what had been Tonto dripping through the ceiling of the bampot in the flat below him, though knowing that didn’t stop the nagging insecurity.

  ‘Of course, anything to help.’

  They couldn’t touch the box till the forensic examination had been completed, but the photograph would do for now. An ID would put them right on track and they could focus on Tonto as the main suspect.

  Grainger’s hand trembled as they handed the photograph to him and he felt his heart thump, even though this was exactly what he’d wanted. The finger pointed straight at Tonto.

  ‘That’s it, that’s it. Where was it? Have you got the bastard?’ He knew as soon as he said it that it wasn’t working. He was full of booze, and the act only really worked when he was fresh and sharp, buzzing on all cylinders. The older of the two suits didn’t like it and Grainger saw the edges of his mouth turn down in a barely concealed sneer.

  ‘We can’t tell you too much at the moment, just that we have this box and we should be able to give you more information in the morning. You know a family liaison officer is available if you need one.’

  ‘No, thanks. It’s fine. I just want to know what you found.’ The game had changed and his head cleared because they had to look at Tonto rather than him as the killer. ‘I’ll call in the morning, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ The detective looked like the word sir had stuck in his throat. ‘We’ll get back in touch first thing and I think we’ll have more to tell you by then.’

  When they left him, Grainger sat on the side of the bed and stared at the floor for a few minutes, then he pulled off his clothes and stood under the shower till his skin tingled with the effect of the freezing water. He made a pot of coffee and forgot to drink it as he stared at the ceiling again, but this time he saw the way ahead. He just had to play the game and it would all work out with that slice of luck.

  About 4 a.m. he drifted off to sleep. The major investigation team were still operating, albeit at a reduced level, but the investigation was still moving forward.

  It was about that same time that one of the detectives on the team called Arthur Hamilton, who was wide awake and sitting at his desk. The DO and Hamilton had done each other favours each way over the years. Hamilton picked up the phone knowing that a call at this time of the morning would mean something. He squeezed the handset tight when the DO gave him what details he had.

  ‘It’s one of Paul and Sean Grainger’s team, but he’s potted, Arthur.’

  ‘The name?’

  ‘Davy McGill. Wee housebreaker turned dealer turned worker for the Graingers.’

  The line went quiet as Hamilton absorbed it and considered what he knew from Frankie Mason.

  ‘Is that Tonto?’

  ‘That’s the one. You know him?’

  There was no answer because Hamilton had ended the call. He was on his feet, his fists were clenched and it was the old rage in him, something he hadn’t felt since he was a young man. He’d put anger away years ago because it was bad for business, but this meant someone was going to pay.

  The first question in his mind was why the fuck was his bastard son-in-law visiting Tonto just before all this?

  He started to punch the wall, trying to rid himself of what was going off inside his head. When he sat down again, his knuckles were raw and bleeding, but it didn’t matter. He picked up the phone and called his man in Glasgow.

  ‘I need a team of four – bad bastards. Call you back later on.’

  ‘It’s yours, Arthur. I’ll fix it up first thing.’

  That was all the reply Hamilton needed.

  47

  Ronnie Slade had given up trying. He’d slipped in and out of a place between sleep and the waking world without ever falling over into something that resembled a peaceful rest. It didn’t bother him any more; years in investigation had taught him that this was just how it was. Hard grinding till the killer was arrested or, worse still, the long, ultimately depressing haul of an unsolved murder. Then the question of whether anything could have been done differently. He only had one unsolved case on his books, but he knew who’d done it – it was a gangland killing with no doubt who’d ordered the execution. There had been the arrest and the inevitable no-comment interview, but they were professionals �
�the body was never found and there was zero forensic evidence – so he could live with that one and it carried no stain.

  The identification of the box was a positive step, and it should really have been a clincher, but there would be other forensic evidence coming, given the state of the locus. There was a balaclava in the rucksack covered in spew and the mess at the locus would probably tie in. In normal circumstances, he would have been flying, with a gold star for solving it and maybe a few days away with his fiancée at the end of it. But it just didn’t have that feel.

  The report from the detectives who’d visited Dominic Grainger with the photo had failed to help his mood. They didn’t like the look of Grainger, but then why would they, he told himself. Peel away the smooth front and Grainger was just another gangster, and they were detectives. He wished he could put his worries away and just get on with it, but he knew exactly what was coming once all the forensic work was done. A partially completed jigsaw with a few pieces missing. There would be a picture they could explain, but what would those missing pieces have told them? He knew the reality was that, even in the best cases with a surplus of evidence, there were always pieces of the story missing.

  He pulled the car up alongside the kerb a couple of hundred yards from the station and stepped out into the cool morning air. It was only 6 a.m. but the city was beginning to stir. He picked up a newspaper on the way and when he left the shop, he heard footsteps behind him; it was Lesley Thompson.

  He grinned. ‘Why do we bother trying to sleep, Les?’

  ‘Beats having a normal life anytime?’ She smiled back and he marvelled again at the way she’d overcome so many hurdles. She’d blossomed into the perfect second in command.

  ‘I can’t make the pieces fit in my head, Les. You know the feeling?’