No Man's Land

by Neil Broadfoot

  He took his time with the remainder of his workout, easing back on the intensity, wanting to be able to raise a glass without his hand shaking. But as he worked, Jen’s smile refused to leave him. That nervous, almost fearful glance, the words that were almost said. Could his reaction have scared her when she’d startled him? If that was the case, why would she agree to go out for a drink with him? And why, for that matter, had he asked her?

  He showered and dressed, a thin sheen of sweat coating his back, the afterburn from his workout, then checked himself in the mirror. The image of your grandfather, he heard his gran whisper in his ear. Forget all that Fraser blood. You’re an O’Brien, son. Plain and simple.

  Growing up, he had never seen it, his grandfather a towering presence whom Connor feared and adored in equal measure. But now, standing in a Stirling gym, his body pumped up by a workout his grandfather would have mirrored at the gym he had assembled at his own home, he saw it: the same broad shoulders, the back that seemed to flare in a too-wide V for the rest of his frame; the heavy jaw that was just the right side of thuggish, making his prominent cheeks and blade-straight nose seem delicate and at odds with the rest of his face. But while his features were his grandfather’s, his eyes were his mother’s, the same luminous green, like chips of jade. He shook himself, raked his fingers through his short, copper-flecked brown hair, then took a deep, steadying breath, amused and a little annoyed to find he was nervous.

  He walked back into Reception, glancing up at the clock on the wall: nine fifty-five p.m. He was early. He sat on the couch that faced the security-locked rotunda doors that made up the entrance, content to wait. He was just fishing out his phone when Jen appeared, her cheeks bright with colour, her breathing fast and excited. ‘Just finishing up. I’ll only be five mi—’ She stopped, staring through the glass front of the building to the street beyond.

  Connor saw the colour drain from her face, her body tensing with the trepidation he had seen in the gym earlier. No, he thought, this was worse. This wasn’t unease. It was fear. He tracked her gaze as he stood up. Saw the outline of a car on the street. ‘Jen? You okay?’ he asked, keeping his voice neutral and his body facing the entrance.

  Rule one: never turn your back on the threat.

  ‘Y-yeah,’ she stuttered, dragging her gaze from the window. Her eyes were wide, her skin pallid. ‘Sorry, Connor. Look, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I’ll see you another time and we can—’

  ‘Jen,’ he said, his voice soft but firm. ‘It’s no problem. Five minutes, okay? Meet me here. If nothing else, I can walk you out. Last thing I want is you to be alone on the street. Imagine what that would do for my reputation.’

  She forced a smile for him, then darted a glance at the door. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, holding her gaze, answering the question she hadn’t answered. ‘Go and get changed. I’ll see you here. And take your time. No rush.’

  Her mouth opened, then closed, a conversation dying on her lips. ‘Okay,’ she said after a moment. He nodded and walked back to the couch. Phone forgotten, he stared out of the window and the shadow that hunched there.

  And waited.

  She was back five minutes later, her uniform swapped for jeans, T-shirt and a leather jacket. She’d brushed her hair and applied make-up, which only accentuated how pale she was. She nodded at him, eyes skittering back to the entrance.

  He pretended not to notice. ‘So, what do you think?’ he asked. ‘Drink? Something to eat?’

  ‘Hm? Oh, sorry. How about a drink? We could walk into town, head for Baker Street?’

  No. 2 Baker Street was a pub near the centre of town. Connor hadn’t been there often, but the beer was good and the surroundings comfortable. It was only a ten-minute walk, most of it close to the road. Perfect.

  They headed out, Connor making sure he stepped onto the street first. He checked to his right: the car he had spotted was still there, a black Mercedes saloon, reflections from the streetlights rippling across its polished bodywork.

  Jennifer stiffened when she saw it, took an involuntary step closer to him.

  ‘You okay?’ he said, looking down at her, making sure he kept the car in his peripheral vision.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, fine. Look, I’m sorry, Connor. Let’s get to the pub. I can buy you a drink and maybe,’ she glanced over his shoulder again, ‘maybe I can ask you a favour.’

  CHAPTER 8

  The house was in almost total darkness by the time Ford got home, the patio light a single beacon in the night. Home was a three-bedroom detached in Bridge of Allan, a small town a ten-minute drive north of Stirling. He and Mary had moved there more than twenty years ago when she’d taken her job at the uni; the campus was close by. With him transferring to what had been Central Scotland Police from Edinburgh CID, it was perfect. And although it was only a stone’s throw from work, Bridge of Allan had always felt separate to him.

  Until tonight.

  He killed the engine, watching as the dashboard clock winked out as he pulled the key from the ignition. Ten thirty-five p.m. A fourteen-hour day. Not unusual. Setting up a major murder investigation was always a laborious, time-consuming process, but with the merger of Scotland’s eight forces into Police Scotland, it had become a bureaucratic nightmare. And with a staffing crisis that made investi- gating anything more complicated than a parking ticket a logistical headache, a murder – especially one as public and brutal as this – piled the pressure on everyone, particularly the man in charge. During a catch-up call to Ford after the press conference, the chief constable had made that all too clear.

  Ford grunted as he hefted himself out of the car, lower back aching dully. He found his key and opened the door, stepped inside and locked up behind him. Then he kicked off his shoes and headed for the living room.

  A single light illuminated the room, thrown by the large reading lamp Mary had set up in the corner behind the couch that dominated the far wall. A small side table had been placed beside his chair, with a bottle of Glenfiddich on a tray, a half-filled glass and a small water jug. A note was propped against the bottle. He didn’t need to read it to know what it said.

  He picked up the glass and sat heavily in his chair. Heard weight shift upstairs, knew Mary would be in bed, reading. He’d told her years ago not to wait up for him, that there was no need for both of them to be exhausted. But she never listened. Whenever there was a big case she wouldn’t sleep until she’d heard him walk into the house. It was their ritual, learnt long ago through bitter experience and arguments that still echoed from the walls. He and Mary had a rule. When he was on a big case, if the hours were long and the circumstances grim, he would sit, have a drink, collect his thoughts, decompress, as he tried to re-enter normality.

  It was Mary’s idea, born of too many arguments when she had faced him as he walked through the door, stunned and drained by the violence and horror he had seen, unable and unwilling to shape it into words for her. Now she would pour him a drink, leave him the note, and go to bed to read. Just the one, Mal. If you want to talk, I’m here. Take the time you need.

  He took a sip of the whisky, enjoyed the sensation of it scalding his throat. Closed his eyes, tried not to think of the horrors he had seen that day. The squeal of a steel spike bobbing in the wind. Of dead, ruined eyes glaring at him from the head impaled on that spike. Of the corpse, reduced to little more than flayed meat, lying on the cold steel of the pathologist’s table.

  And of what they had found next.

  Dr Walter Tennant had worked with the police for as long as Ford could remember. He seemed somehow timeless, an eternal, comforting constant amid the chaos Ford confronted in his work. No matter the case, no matter how brutal the death, Tennant had faced it with the same resolute good humour, a warm smile and a bad joke always on his lips. He was a big man, bearded, with a barrel chest, hulking shoulders and hands that Ford thought were more suited to a rugby player than a pathologist, yet he had seen him work on the dead with a quiet grace
and, yes, an elegance that astounded him.

  But not that afternoon. This was something new. Something that had robbed Tennant of his defiant good humour, his poise and grace. The sight had chilled Ford almost as much as the temperature-controlled mortuary, and underscored for him the sheer savagery, the malevolence of what he was facing.

  The body had been washed and stripped, then laid out on one of the steel tables with the high gutters that would catch the blood and viscera that the post-mortem examination released. At Tennant’s insistence, the head had been similarly prepared – a complex undertaking as, before anything could be done, the object had to be removed from its mouth.

  Tennant worked quietly, the only sound his breathing. Turning the head, examining, probing. Ford’s stomach lurched when Tennant leant in close and prodded the jawline with a finger. ‘Hm. Dislocated.’ He made a further survey, ensuring his assistant – an ashen-faced young woman whose name Ford couldn’t remember – took photographs when needed. Then, in one quick, fluid motion, he pulled the animal from the mouth, which gaped like a dark wound. ‘I’m no expert,’ Tennant said, ‘but it looks like a domestic rat to me. Big but unremarkable. We’ll look at it later.’

  With that done, he picked up the head, then carefully laid it at the top of the table, a sliver of steel glinting between it and the rest of the body as the spotlights revealed the full grotesquery of what lay before them.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Tennant had whispered, a hand rising to scratch his beard. He caught himself: his gloved hand hovered inches from his cheek and he stared at it for a moment, as if it was new and alien to him. He shook his head, a silent admonishment, then dropped his hand, looking at Ford with eyes that were as bright as the spotlights overhead. ‘Malcolm,’ he said, his voice hardening, ‘you don’t have to stay for this, you know. I can get it done and send you the report. From the look of . . . ah, this,’ he waved a hand at the body, ‘it’s not going to be pleasant. I can already see the telltale signs of internal bleeding and multiple fractures. You might not like what you’re about to witness.’

  Ford felt as though he’d swallowed a mouthful of sand. He stood there, pinned, his mind screaming at him to get out, get away from this horror, as far and as quickly as he could. But then, even as he opened his mouth to agree, he heard it. The whispering squeal. The one that he knew would haunt his nightmares.

  Look at me, it sang to him. Look at me.

  ‘No, Walter, thanks,’ Ford said, the words thick and heavy in his throat. ‘I need to be here. I need to know.’

  Tennant said nothing more, just changed his gloves and went to work. He kept up a running commentary as he worked, noting injuries and violations with the businesslike tone of a surveyor listing maintenance points on a dilapidated house.

  And all the while Ford watched, fighting the icy chill that permeated his body, focusing on Tennant’s voice as he tried to drown out that singsong squeal.

  The full examination took a little more than an hour, Tennant seeming to regain his composure as he worked, as though the familiar routine of disembowelling a corpse somehow comforted him.

  When it was done they retreated to his office, a small anteroom that was as cold and clinical as the main examination room. Ford knew Tennant was married with two grandchildren – away from work he couldn’t stop talking about them – but there was no trace of that life now. No pictures, no mementoes, no trinkets from his family. They never spoke about it, but Ford understood. Just as his decompression time with a whisky was his ritual, this was Tennant’s way to shield his family from the unwanted knowledge of violence and death that his job brought him.

  Tennant made coffee with a small kettle in the corner of the room, then barricaded himself behind his desk. The mug looked tiny in his hands, and when he lifted it to his lips, Ford saw a small tremor. ‘So,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  Tennant gazed into his mug, as though the words he sought were in there. ‘Savagery,’ he said finally, not looking up. ‘Utter savagery. Whoever the victim was, he was subjected to a prolonged beating with a blunt object – a metal bar or a baseball bat. One kidney ruptured, every rib broken. Severe bruising and damage to the groin. Seven out of his ten fingers broken. And whoever did this paid particular attention to his primary joints – the knees, ankles and elbows all show signs of multiple fractures.’

  Ford nodded, the question he didn’t want to ask filling the room. ‘Was he . . . ah . . . Well, did he . . .’

  Tennant looked up, the coldness Ford had seen earlier flashing back into his eyes. When he spoke, his tone was as lifeless as the body that lay on his table. ‘If you’re asking if he was alive when he was decapitated, then it’s impossible to give a definitive answer. But . . .’ he took a shaking breath, held it, then exhaled ‘. . . if you want a guess, from the pupil dilation and petechial haemorrhaging to the ragged nature of the wound, I would say he was. And he was thrashing.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Ford whispered. He felt as though he had been plunged into darkness, left to fumble around an unfamiliar room by touch alone. And again he heard it. That singsong squeal. Soft. Discordant. Insistent.

  Look at me.

  ‘Indeed,’ Tennant replied.

  Ford shook himself. When he spoke again, his voice was almost normal, but he hated the whine of desperation he heard. ‘Walter, this is a fucking nightmare. Have you got anything at all that might help me?’

  The pathologist looked down again, studying the naked tabletop in front of him. ‘If you mean identifying him, then dental is out of the question. There was a lot of damage done when the rat was forced into his mouth, and by the look of it, he suffered repeated blows to the head. But his fingerprints are intact, mostly, and of course, we can run his blood, see if we get a match.’

  Ford whistled between his teeth. All valid procedures. All time-consuming. And after the media circus of the press conference, the chief was baying for a result. A quick one. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There’s only one thing,’ Tennant said, leaning forward, ‘and this is off the record, Malcolm. It’s pure conjecture on my part, based on what I found. My theories won’t appear in my report.’

  Despite himself Ford felt a thrill of excitement. ‘At this stage, I’ll take it. What?’

  Tennant glanced out of his office window back to the main examination room. ‘You heard me say when I was examining him that there was a small tattoo on his left pectoral muscle.’ He pointed to his own chest at roughly the point he had noted the inking on the corpse.

  ‘Yeah. Is it significant?’

  ‘It may be. As I said, there were serious injuries around his joints – knees, ankles, elbows. The tattoo may explain some of that.’

  Ford had listened as the doctor talked, waves of cold cramps washing through him.

  Now, sitting in his living room, he looked at the note Mary had left. Just the one, Mal. If you want to talk, I’m here. He laid it aside, poured another whisky and sipped slowly. He ignored the squealing in his mind and put together facts he did not want to know.

  A body. Brutally beaten. Every major joint in the arms and legs broken. A rat forced into the victim’s mouth before he was decapitated, probably while still alive. And on his chest, beneath the bruising, a small tattoo. A tattoo that gave Ford the outline of a picture he didn’t want to see. It was a simple design. A hand, palm out, fingers held tightly together, thumb locked parallel.

  A hand. But not just any hand.

  A red hand.

  The Red Hand of Ulster.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eleven o’clock on a Thursday night, and Baker Street was winding down for the evening. The students had cleared out for the nightclubs, leaving only a smattering of locals and a couple who could only be tourists, given their mahogany-tanned skins, too-white smiles and choice of clothing: chinos and a T-shirt for him, jeans and an ‘I love Scotland’ sweatshirt for her.

  Connor made sure they got a table at the back of the bar, facing the front door. He kept the conversati
on light at first, inanities about work, who was doing what at the gym, what Jen had planned for the weekend. He watched her nerves dissipate as she spoke, the tension leaving her shoulders, the colour returning to her cheeks. He knew the Mercedes had followed them from the gym, breaking off only when Connor had turned into a side lane that was impossible to drive along. He had listened for the clunk of a car door and the clatter of footsteps to catch up. Heard nothing. And, since they arrived, he’d seen no one enter the bar whom he deemed a threat.

  He watched as Jen drained her glass, then nodded to it. She gave him a shy smile, considered, then said, ‘Oh, go on. Just one more. I’m working tomorrow.’

  He headed for the bar and ordered their drinks – vodka and tonic for her, a whisky with ice for him. He didn’t want it, but he liked to chew the ice cubes.

  ‘So,’ he said, as he sat down again, ‘you going to tell me what the favour is you were going to ask?’

  She blinked rapidly, as though waking from a dream. He saw tension jump back into her posture as she sat away from the table, hands spinning the glass as her eyes darted between it and him, unsure what to focus on.

  ‘Ach, that,’ she said, releasing her glass to wave a hand dismissively in front of her. ‘It was nothing, don’t worry about it. It was just . . .’ She let the sentence trail off, busied herself with her drink.

  Connor watched her for a moment, letting the suddenly awkward silence drag out as he made a decision.

  Fuck it. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but if it’s something to do with whoever is following you in the Merc that was outside the gym, I can help.’

  Her head whipped up, eyes filled with electrified panic. For a moment, Connor thought she would leave, but then she took a breath, centred herself. When she spoke, her voice was almost even. ‘How did you know about . . .?’

  ‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘I saw the way you reacted when you saw the car at the gym, and whoever was driving didn’t make much of an effort to disguise the fact they were following us. I’m surprised the driver hasn’t stepped in here, which means they either figured out where you were heading or have what they needed.’