Our Little Secrets

by Peter Ritchie

  Grainger had taken the biggest hit financially but he’d planned that, and it was worth it to keep his cover and make him look like the biggest loser. His mortgage was paid off, he would get the life insurance pay-off and he’d taken the sensible option of getting rid of the flat. He would get back into business full-time, where he belonged. His marriage had been the start of so many of his problems, and he wished he’d never set eyes on Jude.

  He had a good seat at the back of the pub with a view of the boozer door and it wasn’t too busy. The TV was blaring out a sports channel that no one was watching, and his two heavies were across the road in a car. Arthur Hamilton came in and went through the same routine as always – he saw Grainger but stood in the door, scanning the place for any sign of a problem.

  Grainger raised his glass, but Hamilton didn’t change his expression. He looked older; his build had always been square and strong, but now there was almost the hint of a stoop and his shoulders were more rounded. Bereavement could do terrible things. Grainger had to work to keep the grin off his face.

  When Hamilton sat down, Grainger said, ‘Drink?’

  The invitation was ignored, and he realised that there was even a change in the big man’s colour. He’d always had the perma-tan and got away with it, but there was a blueish tinge to his cheeks now, and Grainger realised that the man was hurt far more than he’d realised. It was a fucking result, as far as he was concerned.

  ‘Let’s cut the shite, son. Shove the drink. I’m here tae deliver a message.’ His body might have looked weakened, but his voice was strong and full of the old passion.

  Grainger was thrown for a minute, and he struggled to work out whether this was the pre-cursor to an attack or a rant. His father-in-law had hated him since they’d met, and that was no surprise. He nodded and said, ‘What’s on your mind, Arthur?’

  Hamilton leaned forward, and those blue eyes that had been a striking feature of his looks bulged, red-rimmed and angry.

  ‘I’ll tell ye what’s on ma mind. You killed Davy McGill an’ ma Jude. Don’t take the pish wi’ a denial or I’ll fuckin’ do you here an’ now.’

  He pulled out a hanky and dabbed it across his top lip. Grainger was sure he could go pound for pound with a man in such decline, but Hamilton was an old-school street fighter and had the X factor when it came to a tussle. That animal instinct to rip the other man’s throat out before he did it to you.

  ‘You an’ that fuckin’ bitch Hadden are responsible, and you’ll pay. She’s been sorted. The difference is I let her live.’

  Grainger sat back and realised that his optimism had been premature. He tried to take in the fact that Hamilton had the balls to lift a detective and leave her wrecked in the middle of the M8.

  ‘Think you’ve got this all wrong, Arthur.’ It was feeble and Grainger heard the lie in his own voice. There was a time when there was no point fucking around, so he sat back and waited.

  ‘I’ve got fuck all wrong, boy. I could have had you picked up and tortured, but I want you to have a bit o’ time to think about it. Sweat, sleepless nights, wonderin’ when you get the message. Next time I see you I’ll have you strapped to a chair an’ a blowtorch in my hand.’

  ‘Fuck you, Arthur.’ Grainger had no choice but to push back. His nerves were shredded, but there was nowhere else to go, and he’d become angry himself that his plans had been fucked up. ‘She was a fuckin’ bitch, Arthur, an’ a slag, your daughter. Want the truth? She was into black men. Imagine that, Arthur, picking up black men – an’ half the time she never even got their name.’

  Hamilton was already rising from the seat. His face was scarlet and there was a dribble of spit running down the side of his chin. He managed to say, ‘I’ll fuckin’ kill you,’ but the words were strangled and Grainger blinked as the big man seemed to do an almost comical dance before slumping forward over the table. His face was side-on, right in front of Grainger, who couldn’t compute what had happened.

  He was vaguely aware of people crowding round Hamilton and lowering him to the floor. People were firing questions at him and he looked blankly at them without saying a word. Then his mind cleared and he stood up and said, ‘He’s my father-in-law.’

  A man seemed to have taken control and said he was a nurse.

  Grainger looked down at Hamilton, who was making a sound as if he was being strangled. His face was distorted and Grainger heard someone say it looked like a stroke. Someone else said, ‘It’s awright, son – you have a seat an’ we’ll look efter the auld man.’

  Grainger was ushered to a seat and people put their hands on his shoulders.

  His mind cleared and he wanted to raise his hands to the heavens and thank God for his intervention. A stroke – a fucking stroke! Jesus, what a result, he thought. He wanted to do a little jig and dance round the shattered body of his father-in-law but that could wait.

  The ambulance arrived and took Big Arthur Hamilton to A&E. A couple of the locals offered to drive Grainger, but he said it was okay – he had transport.

  Grainger walked down Leith Walk to the car and one of the heavies asked, ‘Where to, boss?’

  ‘The off-licence. Want to get some champagne.’

  Momentum had changed again and he was going to end up king of the fucking castle.

  ‘Good times ahead, boys. Stick with me an’ you’ll never regret it.’

  He arsed the bottle of expensive champagne at home and still couldn’t take it in. He’d gone to the hospital after buying the booze just to make sure the bastard was really ill or dead. The doctor had looked serious, though Grainger could hardly resist slapping him on the back and saying ‘nice one’ when he was told it looked like Hamilton had suffered a massive stroke. He had a couple of shots of whisky after the bubbly and rolled into bed a happy man.

  63

  It felt as if the muscles and tendons of both shoulders were being ripped out slowly, the balls forced from their sockets as the men each pushed hard against an elbow to straighten his arms behind him. The pain should have been excruciating, but strangely enough there was nothing, and from that moment he was aware only of the wind whipping through his hair and the deathly quiet. His mind, like his ruined body, had passed that point of no return where fear had been replaced by an almost dreamlike state. He didn’t give a fuck because there was no point, and he realised that they couldn’t hurt him any more. The bastards who thought they controlled him were wrong.

  Despite this state of mind, he was aware of a problem that needed to be resolved, which was that his whole body was hanging forward by about twenty degrees and seemed to be defying the laws of gravity. In fact, that wasn’t really the problem at all; when it came down to it, the problem was that his feet were on a ledge, and the rubbish-strewn ground was way too far below him for Lady Luck to hand out any form of landing that wouldn’t kill him. No chance of an expert parachute roll before springing to his feet like an acrobat and sticking two fingers up at them; with his luck, he’d land in a pile of Doberman shit. He was fucked and had always been fucked; he just hadn’t realised it before. They were five (or was it a hundred?) storeys up on top of a disused industrial building in the middle of a wasteland which seemed to stretch out to the horizon without a break. It looked like those pictures of a World War One battlefield. He thought there would be a few seconds’ flying and then it would all be over. Not so bad after what the bastards had already done to him.

  ‘It’s time tae go, son.’ He said it through the blood that kept filling his mouth. For the first time in his life he was absolutely sure what he wanted to do. That was it: the meaning of life – the moment where you realised it was just another scene from Monty Python. Fragmented thoughts were fighting with each other to make it into the conscious part of his brain and he remembered the old line from The Lion King: ‘I laugh in the face of danger.’ People did it and found strength. There was an old school pal who was a genuine good guy, had never harmed a fly, who just kept smiling and saying ‘fuck it’ before he die
d of cancer. He’d hardly ever cursed in his life, so it had real effect. ‘Fuck it’ made sense to him after that. It gave meaning to what was left – he understood it – and the best bit was that the bastards who’d spent the afternoon taking lumps out of him didn’t. How good was that?

  They were so strong they didn’t have to grip him hard, and instead of concentrating they were taking the piss out of him and hee-hawing to each other at his distress. They both froze for a moment, wondering why a man with his coupon rearranged and hanging over the edge of a tall building was laughing.

  Dominic Grainger looked round and discovered it was his brothers holding his arms. Where had they come from? He took them by complete surprise and stepped over the side onto thin air. They weren’t prepared and he slipped through their greasy paws like the wind. He closed his eyes and flew like a bird. No one could touch him now.

  He woke up screaming – it was just a dream.

  He pulled his legs over the bed and rubbed his face with the palm of his hands. He felt like shit and the dream had frightened him, but he didn’t know why because it made no sense. He usually had no problems with hangovers, but his head throbbed and he headed for the bathroom for an aspirin breakfast.

  A couple of coffees and a shower cleared some of the pain, but the tension behind his eyes was draining. It was the impact of what he’d been through, and for the first time in his life he felt the years weighing on him. It wasn’t that long ago that his energy levels had seemed endless, but now he felt nothing but almost painful exhaustion, and things should have been better than that.

  He sat still for an hour, ignoring the calls coming in, and let the headache pass. The more he thought about Arthur Hamilton, the better he felt, though it was still hard to believe that his greatest threat was out of the game – that and he could benefit if the old bastard died because he had no other family to speak of.

  He gradually worked up the energy to call the hospital and they said he could come in. The nurse on the other end was sympathetic and couldn’t know that Grainger would have pissed himself laughing if he could, though for the time being he’d act the caring son-in-law.

  When he reached the hospital, he sought out the lead doctor on Hamilton’s case.

  ‘Is there anything he needs, Doctor?’ Grainger put on his concerned face.

  ‘Nothing at the moment. He’s a very sick man and will need a lot of care. The damage is significant – loss of mobility, speech – and it’s highly unlikely he’ll ever come anywhere near normal function again. We just need time to assess him and get him through this phase of the treatment.’

  The doctor was impatient to be away, and that was always the case, but Grainger couldn’t care less. He only had one more question. ‘Can he hear me if I speak?’

  ‘Of course, and it’s what you should be doing. Sorry, I have other patients.’

  Grainger wanted to say, ‘Fuck off then,’ but he just nodded, expressed heartfelt concern and shook the doctor’s hand. The doctor clearly didn’t appreciate the gesture.

  He walked into the room and found it quiet, apart from the low buzz from the machines monitoring and keeping Big Arthur from dying. He was lying half on his side, facing the door, and he certainly wasn’t the big man any more. He seemed to have shrivelled – even his hair had lost its volume and was lying in damp strands across his head. One eye was open, one half-closed and drooped at the outside edge, and his mouth was half-open. The veins on his hand seemed to stand out like blue strings, and he made a low groaning sound when he saw his son-in-law.

  Grainger pulled a chair in close and put his face close to Hamilton’s, but there was a foul stink on his breath and he drew back.

  ‘How are you, Arthur? I’ve been worried about you.’

  He looked round to make sure there were no nurses earwigging nearby. He moved his face close again and tolerated the stink because it was important.

  ‘I fucking killed her, Arthur. It was me and I enjoyed it. She begged me, but I did it anyway. By the way, she told me years ago what you did to her mother, so we’re not that different, you fucking hypocrite. I did McGill as well. Who gives a fuck?’

  Hamilton tried to say something but all that came out was a gurgling sound in his throat. Grainger smiled.

  ‘I know, Arthur – you’d love to kill me an’ all that shite, but that ain’t happening now, pal. You’re not quite a vegetable but near enough. Good news is that I’m all your family now an’ I’m going to take good care of you. See, I want you to live like this for as long as possible. I’ll be able to visit you all the time, and you’ll be able to look at the face of the man who smashed Jude’s fucking brains in.’

  He smiled, and added, ‘By the way, I’m guessing that was a nice touch with Janet Hadden. Fuck knows what you did to her, but the bonus was you got rid of another problem for me. Well done.’

  He stood up. ‘You take care, Arthur, and I’ll be back whenever I feel like taking the piss.’

  He was about to walk out of the room but turned back for a moment. He leaned over again, close up. ‘Next time I’ll tell you all about Jude’s tastes in men – you’ll love that.’

  He walked out of the room, enjoying the low moaning sound behind him, and stopped to speak to the duty nurse. ‘If there’s anything he needs, please let me know, and I’ll make sure he gets it. I’m his only family now and just want the best for him.’

  The nurse put her hand on his forearm and squeezed it.

  ‘It’s lucky he has you – so many of the people we have here have no one.’

  ‘I’m so fond of him. God, he didn’t deserve this.’ Grainger struggled to keep the smile off his face – it was all just pure fucking gravy.

  He walked out of the hospital and felt the cool air on his face. The crisis was nearly over, he was back in charge and he thought he’d treat himself to a visit to his favourite escort. He hadn’t felt like being with a woman for weeks, but the urge was back and it was time to celebrate. There were always a few loose ends, but all in all he was on solid ground and the only way was up. He’d arranged to see Sean and Paul in remand for appearances’ sake and it would be the right thing to do. He’d get the best advocate money could buy and enjoy the spectacle of the silk trying to defend against a shitload of evidence.

  64

  Macallan looked at the various reports in front of her and sighed. She was toiling to work up any enthusiasm, and what had happened to Janet Hadden sickened her, because it was connected to what they’d been investigating, though it was unlikely she would ever find any answers.

  Ronnie Slade was on a new case, and she wouldn’t be allowed to investigate any further, given her role in counter-corruption.

  She looked at the names: Davy McGill, Jude Hamilton, the Grainger brothers and now Arthur Hamilton, struck down with a massive stroke. The last man standing was Dominic Grainger. She still didn’t know exactly what had happened, but he’d grassed his brothers and some Belfast Loyalists. That took nerve or utter stupidity, unbridled ambition or complete madness, or maybe all of them. She tapped her pen against the top of the desk and called Dominic Grainger.

  He seemed surprised when he recognised her voice. ‘Why, I thought this case was closed and I’m very involved looking after my father-in-law, so I hope you’re not going to waste my time.’

  She told him it was just routine and tidying up a few loose ends. She suggested his office, and she knew she would have to be careful in case he was recording, but it wouldn’t matter – she’d choose her words carefully.

  After the call, he stared at his reflection in the office mirror – he looked like a city trader and felt like a million dollars. Macallan was coming on her own, so he didn’t feel spooked – if there had been a problem, there would have been two of them. He’d googled her and was intrigued; he’d seen her name in the headlines before and meeting her would be interesting if nothing else.

  His secretary showed her in and Grainger was impressed. In a way, she had that slightly plain, serious l
ook that he’d found so attractive in Janet Hadden the first time he’d met her. He saw the ring on her left hand and felt slightly disappointed, though he’d enjoyed his share of marrieds in the past. He offered her coffee and she refused.

  ‘What can I do for you, Superintendent?’

  ‘I want to know if you can tell me who killed Davy McGill. I think it was you.’ She paused. ‘I think you had something to do with your wife’s death as well, but can’t prove it, of course, so thought I’d ask. There’s no one here with me. I’m just curious.’

  Grainger was thrown for a moment on how to react. It was a game, so he decided he was safe enough to play. He was strong again, and after the thin-ice risks he’d taken, he was back on top. In fact, all the threats to his safety had been eliminated.

  ‘Sorry, Superintendent, I really don’t know what makes you think that. I should be annoyed, but I’ve suffered so much recently that I won’t react.’

  ‘You weren’t so upset that you set up your brothers. You’re a rat. You know officially we call people like you agents, but behind closed doors your title is rat.’

  Macallan kept eye contact and watched his every little gesture. She saw the anger in him rising like a tide that couldn’t be controlled. She’d caught him unprepared and he was taking the bait. His lips tightened.

  ‘You should be careful, Superintendent. People stick their nose in the wrong place and get hurt. Ask Janet Hadden.’

  Macallan stood up. ‘Just wanted to meet you face-to-face. I’ve been dealing with people like you far too long.’

  Macallan couldn’t hide the contempt she felt for the man behind the desk. ‘Just wanted to ask, and in a way you’ve answered the question.’

  Grainger shrugged. ‘What difference does any of this make to me?’ He tried to look mildly amused – in control – but he was far from it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter – you wouldn’t understand anyway.’ Macallan had seen enough.