Our Little Secrets

by Peter Ritchie

  Macallan had known small talk was out of the question, so she’d made sure there was some distance between them. She had one of her inspectors with her, and she’d used the time they were outside to go over a few more points before the interview.

  She’d glanced over at Hadden a couple of times and wondered why they’d never come across each other before. She knew her by sight, and she’d heard the stories that she was a bit of a cold fish, but very efficient and got the job done, though Macallan guessed some people would describe her the same way.

  The all-clear was eventually given and they’d drifted back into the building and met up near Macallan’s office. They did the formalities and Macallan found herself in a similar position to Ronnie Slade in that all they had was information from Jacquie Bell’s source, who they didn’t know. Macallan would have trusted her friend with her life, but they were on soft ground and would have to go easy.

  When she was on the way back into the office she’d received a text from Lesley Thompson that said they’d scored a big round zero with Grainger and they were wrapping up, so this was the only lead they had left.

  Hadden sat across the table almost expressionless and said nothing; she didn’t need to.

  ‘This is not a formal interview, Inspector Hadden, and we appreciate how difficult it can be running agents and that you get enough problems as it is. However, you must be aware of the murder of Jude Hamilton – or Grainger – and of course she was the wife of a source registered to you.’

  Macallan looked up from her notes, expecting some reaction. Hadden just nodded and barely moved.

  ‘There are some questions being asked of Mr Grainger, and I can tell you that he’s being interviewed again by the SIO on the David McGill incident team.’ She looked directly at Hadden when she said it and saw a flicker across her eyes. That one had touched a nerve.

  Hadden felt her pulse rise when Macallan told her that Grainger was with Slade, but she realised very quickly that the words had been chosen carefully and she clasped her hands before speaking.

  ‘Has he been detained?’ She felt her heart thump, because if he had then events might spin out of control.

  Macallan wished she could lie, but as they were on tape, she had no choice but to tell the truth, though she knew her answer would ease the pressure on Hadden if she was involved in anything with Grainger.

  ‘No, he’s just giving a further statement.’ She watched Hadden unclasp her hands. ‘In addition, the man suspected of killing her was also your source, and you must appreciate that this situation does cause concern.’

  ‘I appreciate it’s unusual, Superintendent, but they were recruited and handled properly so I understand the force will want to make sure everything was done properly, but I’m confident it was.’

  Macallan went through every detail of the record of the original approaches to Davy McGill then Grainger by Hadden and her partner. The forms were immaculate; Hadden was almost obsessive about record-keeping, and she had to be.

  ‘Whose idea was it to target McGill then Grainger for recruitment in the first place, Inspector?’

  ‘Mine, but the proposal was supported by my supervisors, and we believed that because Dominic Grainger was an up-and-comer he could be a valuable long-term source. We thought if we managed to sign him on, he would be a high-grade asset for years to come. Davy McGill was a natural target to start with, and we wanted to get him on board to help us with intelligence on the Graingers and as a way of corroborating what we got from Dominic. There wasn’t anything unusual about that strategy.’ She stayed calm, knowing Macallan’s reputation and that she’d be studying every move she made.

  ‘I notice that one job based on information you received where Sean Grainger was the target ended up looking like a set-up.’ Macallan saw another flicker – that one had rubbed a nerve – but what struck her most was that Janet Hadden had iron control, and she wondered what that meant in context.

  ‘These things happen, ma’am. Sure you’ve had your own problems with sources in the past.’

  Macallan flicked her eyes up at Hadden. It had been delivered quietly, but it was a dig in the ribs. Macallan wanted to tell her who was in charge, but she knew that she had to control herself just as tightly as the woman across the table. She was rarely guilty of pre-judging people, but she didn’t like Hadden. It was impossible to say why that was, but it wasn’t just the dig in the ribs.

  They were fucking around and that was a waste, so Macallan got to the point. She put the story to Hadden that a woman had been seen with Dominic Grainger before he’d been registered as an informant, and before the first recorded approach through a phone call.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, ma’am.’

  Macallan watched Hadden touch her face in a nervous gesture.

  ‘The source of this information has told us that the woman with Grainger assaulted a man in the bar, and that that woman was you.’

  Hadden swallowed, and the edges of her nostrils flared for a moment, but she rode the little crisis, reminding herself that if this was solid, then she’d have been cautioned, so they were short somehow. Besides, she’d had a disguise on so there was speculation and then there was hard proof. If they had the latter, she’d already be staring at the ceiling in a locked cell, so unless Dominic had grassed her, there had to be a weakness in the story. Whatever, someone had seen them that night and remembered, but how the fuck had they identified her?

  ‘I absolutely deny this and would like to know where it came from.’ She held her nerve and knew to just say what she needed to say and nothing more.

  Macallan pressed her along the same lines and that was enough for Hadden to know that was all they had. Someone had seen her, but they weren’t sure of the information. She gave the same answers to the same questions. The interview was running out of steam, and they both knew it, but Hadden wanted to act the innocent but dedicated detective.

  ‘Look, ma’am, I know this situation with Jude Hamilton throws up some problems for us but that allegation about me is malicious unless you have something else. The other thing is that Dominic Grainger is helping us with an arms-trafficking job and I hope we can still work on this. All I ever try to do is my job.’

  She sat back and wondered again who the fuck had seen her and how they’d identified her. Could she have been followed? And if so, why?

  When she walked out of Fettes, her face was twisted in anger. Her control had been dropped and she knew she would have to be careful; she’d seen the suspicious look in Macallan’s eyes.

  Macallan stood at her office window and watched Hadden walk across Fettes Avenue. ‘Think I’ll meet this one again,’ she said to her reflection then turned, picked up her phone and called Jacquie Bell. She couldn’t mention that the source had seen the woman going to Grainger’s flat because that would have exposed the fact that either she or Dominic Grainger had been under some form of surveillance, even though it was a PI.

  ‘Any chance I can talk to your source, Jacquie? Hadden denies all knowledge.’

  ‘Leave it with me, Grace, and I’ll see what I can do.’

  58

  Grace Macallan shook her head with the trace of a wry grin. She’d seen it all before and it was just Sod’s Law interfering again.

  It was the day after the interviews with Grainger and Hadden and she’d arranged to meet Slade and Thompson to debrief what had happened. Macallan had just taken a chair in Slade’s office when his phone rang and looking at his face, she didn’t need to hear what was being said to him to guess what was happening. A young woman from Livingston had been missing for over a week and it was looking serious. She’d been missing before, but there were bad omens on this one.

  Slade put the phone down, glanced towards the window and shrugged as he turned to Thompson.

  ‘They’re making noises that we might be pulled onto the missing girl case – there’s some evidence she was seen with an unknown male before she disappeared.’

  ‘We’re bein
g punished for something in a previous life, Ronnie.’ Thompson smiled as she said it – she’d picked up the same vibe as Macallan. She had a weekend planned with the new man in her life and she hoped this wouldn’t mean cancelling the arrangement. He was the first man she’d been with since she’d been injured in the Fettes bombing. Her body had been scarred, and although her face had been more or less undamaged, it had taken her a long time to become confident enough again to share her time with someone else.

  Slade knew exactly what the position was and said, ‘Take the weekend, Lesley, whatever happens. You deserve it and no arguments, please.’

  ‘The price of success, Ronnie.’ Macallan had a moment when she wished it was her taking the call, but it passed as she saw the lines starting to cut in around Slade’s eyes. She knew exactly how he felt. Weary but fascinated by the possibility of a new case. It was the drug again – always the next case.

  Slade looked towards Macallan, and for a moment he seemed like the boy who’d let everyone down. ‘Sorry, Grace, but if I get pulled away, this will have to go to a DI to tidy it up, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Tell the truth, I don’t know how much more we can do anyway.’ He explained in great detail what had happened with Grainger and conceded that it had taken them no further forward.

  ‘What did you think of Janet Hadden?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t get any further than you, and at the end of the day maybe the information is just wrong. It happens. I’m going to see if I can meet the source of the information and take it from there, but I’m not holding my breath. My gut feeling is not good. A couple of the questions hit a nerve with her, but that doesn’t prove anything. That’s as far as it goes, but I’m not giving up on it just yet. Want to bottom it out rather than it coming back again in future and biting us on the leg.’

  They wound up the meeting. Macallan gave Thompson a squeeze then decided to stretch her legs and walk into the centre of town, where she could enjoy the warm sun that was giving the old city some respite from the previous days of rain. She bought a paper, sat outside a coffee shop and glanced at the headlines, which were constantly bad these days. The country was still obsessed with Brexit and the political parties were ripping themselves up, but the forecast was for a long dry spell and she decided that was the only good news.

  She couldn’t concentrate on any of the articles though, and her thoughts kept going back to Hadden. There was something wrong with the whole thing, but it might never come to light. If she was dirty, then it was an unusual one – most of the cases she investigated involved all the old motives of sex, money or revenge. Why would Hadden be corrupt? She was single, seemed to avoid relationships and, according to her research, was well off financially. She was doing well career wise but wasn’t a flyer, although she couldn’t help thinking that Hadden should be with her record. She sipped her coffee and answered her phone. It was Jacquie Bell.

  ‘My source won’t meet you. Honestly, Grace, he’s terrified of what might happen if his name comes out. Did my best but if you want me to ask him anything just say. He’s with me now.’

  ‘Did you mention that there was a CCTV recording of what happened in the bar?’

  ‘There was and he had it, but Arthur Hamilton has it now. Problem is, if you go to him about that recording, he’s going to know exactly where that information came from.’

  Bell then told Macallan to take care and finished the call.

  The reporter was spot on, and Macallan knew there was no way she could put Bell’s source at risk – and he would be given Arthur Hamilton’s track record.

  The other problem was that it looked like Dominic Grainger was going to provide information on arms trafficking to Belfast. That was a big deal, and the executive would love those kinds of headlines after so many failures for Police Scotland. It didn’t help that Macallan’s unit was getting nothing but grief over its own conduct into the search for leaks from the force.

  She ordered another coffee and grinned, thinking that she’d never have ordered a second coffee in the past. There was always too much to do, but her driven nature had mellowed. Motherhood, marriage and too many dark memories had changed her into a different person.

  She’d watched Andy Murray saying on the TV that his wife and child were his priority now, tennis came second, and she got that. She was becoming content, and for a detective that could be a disadvantage, although she believed it worked the opposite way for her. She called Jack, told him she loved him and to kiss the children and pat the dog for her.

  Macallan lifted her face to the sun and thought about Slade and Thompson. They were the new stars in crime detection now, and Macallan wondered if she was getting past her best, although she’d been asking the same kind of question for years. Self-doubt was a burden she could never shake off. The job was a short life and you became a dinosaur very quickly, but that was how it had to be. There was so much damage done investigating the hard cases; they drained the soul, and it was natural that the best detectives burned out too quickly.

  She picked up her bag and decided to walk back to the office. Work could wait.

  At that same moment, Arthur Hamilton had been staring at his study window for over an hour, barely moving. Anyone looking at him could never have guessed at the rage coursing through his blood. He had nothing left, and he felt empty. A living daughter who hated him had at least given him hope of reconciliation, and he could dream.

  Now the horizon was empty and dark, there was only the memories. He stood up and knew exactly what he was going to do. It didn’t matter what happened to him at the end of it all, but that rage needed to be channelled.

  59

  Paul Grainger hadn’t been too sure about the job originally, but it was a big earner because the Belfast team were taking twenty kilos of coke along with the guns. Dominic had reassured them that this would just be the first and they were willing to take regular deliveries, including as much counterfeit goods as the Graingers could supply.

  ‘They’re hard bastards to deal with, but handy to have on our side, and they have rock-solid systems to avoid the law. I want you two to do the business – it’s that important. Sean, you go with the load, and Paul, you follow on and watch for any attention. I want you to meet the boys in Cairnryan and get to know them if this is going to be a new line of business for us.’

  Dominic opened up a couple of beers and pushed them across the table. ‘There won’t be any problems this time, and we have a bogey run going in front that has a genuine load. A few of the team know about that one, but apart from the suppliers down south, only us three know about this load so we’re solid.’

  ‘We could certainly do with the money and getting back to normal,’ Paul said, staring at his brother. He still wondered about what had happened to Jude. It had brought a shitload of unnecessary attention from the police, so they’d done almost no business, and on top of the other losses, they needed a job to go right.

  ‘Okay.’ Whatever else Paul thought, he was lifted by the return to business. ‘You alright with this, Sean?’

  Sean nodded – like Paul, he needed some action. He was bored and pissed off with everything that had happened in the previous weeks. ‘Tell the truth, brothers, I just want to get involved. Know what I mean?’

  They left the office when they’d finished their beers. The job for Belfast would run the following morning.

  Frankie Mason had a small team watching Dominic Grainger, and they followed him away from the office and straight to another meet. The watchers called back that he’d driven out into the country near Penicuik and met up with a woman.

  Mason clenched his fist when they came back with the description – it was Janet Hadden again. He’d been working on more of the phone records for Grainger, and before Jude had been murdered, he’d noticed a couple of calls to an insurance company, though at the time he’d ignored it. He’d followed it up since the murder and found that there was a big fat insurance policy in play and Dominic was looking at a hea
vy-duty pay-off. It might mean nothing, just the sort of thing a smart businessman would do, but it was interesting, and he knew Arthur Hamilton would have his own view on it.

  Grainger left the meet, went straight home and didn’t leave again. Mason called the team off and phoned Hamilton. He told him what they’d seen and what he’d discovered about the insurance policy.

  ‘Nice work, Frankie, and keep them on it.’

  Hamilton had already decided that at some point he was going to lift Paul Grainger because he’d been Davy McGill’s boss man and he wanted to find out what the fuck he knew. Depending what happened with that, he was going to look into the eyes of Janet Hadden and find out what she was involved in. All he wanted was to squeeze whoever needed it till he understood what was behind the murder of his daughter.

  ‘Put a couple o’ the boys on Paul Grainger, Frankie, and don’t ask why, right?’

  ‘Fair enough, Arthur. Long as they get paid they’re happy.’

  Mason put down the phone, called his team and told them to split up and watch Paul as well as Dominic Grainger.

  Hamilton sat at his desk and stared at the picture of Jude. His pulse throbbed like a hammer in his neck and he wanted to hurt someone – to do it with his own hands to relieve the pressure. He phoned his friend in Glasgow and started to put his game into play.

  ‘The female that ripped off yer boy. I’m havin’ her in. Take it he’d like a word wi’ her?’

  ‘Sure he will, Arthur.’ The Glasgow man knew his son had been humiliated and would lap up the chance to get payback. He still didn’t know that the woman was a detective and Hamilton would leave it that way in case he took the jitters.

  ‘There’s somethin’ else, pal. I want the boy to bring some people wi’ him when I get her in.’