No Man's Land

by Neil Broadfoot

  The police car was three vehicles ahead by the time Donna caught it on Polmaise Road, picking up speed. She followed as closely as she dared, praying that another wasn’t setting off from the station and about to appear in her rear-view mirror. The car flashed past the golf course then hung a left, Donna keeping it in view and trying to figure out where it was heading. It was hopeless: on the road it was travelling along it could hit the centre of town in less than fifteen minutes, or be heading for Raploch or even Bridge of Allan. Forget trying to anticipate, she thought, just keep it in sight.

  Ten minutes later she watched the marked car drive into the grounds of the uni, watched it speed up to take the hill past Airthrey Loch as it made for the heart of the campus. She parked, willing herself to release her grip on the steering wheel, thoughts racing.

  Why was Ford here? What had happened? Did they have a suspect, a weapon?

  Her mind was a riot of thoughts and theories. She needed to get in there, needed to know, but there was no way she’d get through that police cordon. If only . . .

  Her head whipped up, phone in her hand before the thought was fully formed. She pushed aside the nagging feeling that she was crossing an invisible line even as she called the number.

  She pressed the phone to her ear, willing it to be answered, willing it to—

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Gav? Gav, it’s Donna Blake, how you doing today?’

  ‘Eh, it’s all going a bit nuts here just now, to be honest, Ms Blake, something going on with the polis.’ His voice, normally so deep she could feel it reverberate in her chest, was high and wavering, pulled taut by adrenalin.

  Donna stared out of the window, swallowing down the excitement that crawled up her throat. All going a bit nuts here.

  Perfect.

  When she wasn’t freelancing, Donna tutored on the journalism-studies course run by the university. It was easy work and good money, and some of the students could be fun. Like Gavin Webster, a lithe, almost lanky twenty-year-old from Perth whose pale complexion went a shade darker every time Donna walked into the room. She had played up to his obvious attraction to her, even though she hated herself for doing it. She’d worked hard to regain her figure after having Andrew, but still the self-doubt lingered. And Gavin’s attention helped dispel it. ‘Eh, Ms Blake?’ Gav asked, confusion bleeding the tension from his voice.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, Gav, sorry. So you’re on the campus now?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, his voice brightening. ‘The cops are clearing everyone out, but I was on the grounds with the camera, trying out some shots, so I’m still here. Looks like whatever’s going on, it’s up at the hotel.’

  Donna knew the place. The Stirling Court had been built at the top of a hill looking down on the rest of the uni campus. With its views of the Wallace Monument and the Ochil Hills, it did well as an events venue and a conference centre. But what did that mean for the story? Why had Ford been called there?

  ‘Listen, Gav, you fancy doing me a wee favour?’

  ‘Yeeaaah?’ he replied, wary eagerness giving his voice a brittle edge. She knew he was blushing.

  ‘Fancy testing that camera a bit? See if you can get any shots of what’s going on and send them over to me. Nothing that’s going to get you in any trouble, but anything that could help with the story. I’ll owe you one.’ She winced as she said it, her earlier unease blossoming into something uglier. But she needed this. For her. And Andrew.

  ‘Well, I . . .’ Gav said.

  ‘Please, Gav, it would really help.’ She let the statement hang, his indecision screaming in the sudden silence on the line. Then she heard him inhale.

  ‘Aye. I’ll see what I can get and ping them over to your email. Okay, Ms Blake?’

  ‘Yes, please, and it’s Donna.’

  ‘Donna, aye,’ he said, his voice a whisper. ‘Leave it with me.’

  The phone went dead as Gav ended the call. Donna looked at it for a moment, studied the shadow of her reflection in the little screen as revulsion rose. She should call the poor kid back, tell him it was a mistake, not to bother. She spent a lot of her classes talking about the morality of journalism, that it wasn’t all phone hacking and breathless accounts of which D-list nobody was shagging whom, and yet now here she was, feeding a poor kid the same bullshit Mark had used on her. Her finger hovered over the phone. But she held back. She’d call him in a minute. Just one more minute . . .

  Twenty minutes crawled by, the phone unused. Then it buzzed. Donna’s heart leapt as she unlocked it, saw the emails sitting there. She scrolled through them, her mouth dropping open.

  Gavin. Sweet, naïve Gavin Webster. She could have kissed him.

  She called his number, wasn’t surprised when he answered on the second ring.

  ‘That’s all I could get Ms B– Donna,’ he said. ‘Cops are all over the place. They do?’

  ‘They’re perfect, Gav, absolutely perfect. You’re a genius. Now, listen, I need to ask you a couple of questions on the record, but don’t worry, I’m only going to quote you as an eyewitness. Okay?’

  ‘So you’re not going to put me on the radio?’

  Donna bit back a surge of impatience, forced her voice to be calm. ‘No, Gavin, not just now. I don’t want you to be linked to the pictures or the story, and someone would recognize your voice. I’m going to write it up as a news story, put it on the website and see if we can punt it nationally.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Great,’ Donna said. ‘So, from the beginning, just tell me everything you saw.’

  CHAPTER 17

  Connor finished his press-ups, then tidied the flat, trying to ignore the nagging annoyance he felt for goading Paulie into a fight. It had been stupid, unprofessional and, no doubt, there would be consequences – from the look the man had given him when he was leaving, Connor put even money on Paulie coming back for a rematch to reclaim some of his wounded pride. He couldn’t blame him.

  He thought briefly of his father, Jack, what he would have said, and gave a bitter laugh. He’d blame it on his own father, Campbell Fraser. Connor had never met his paternal grandfather, who had walked out on his wife when his son was in his early teens, but he knew him. Sometimes, usually after one too many drams, Jack Fraser would whisper stories that made his grandfather into a bogeyman – a cautionary tale to be learnt and an example not to live by. He was, according to his dad, a Jekyll and Hyde character. In public he was a charming if unexceptional surveyor with an interest in motor racing and an obsession with football, but in private an ugly drunk who took out his frustration and bitterness about the shortcomings of his own life on his wife and son.

  ‘You’ve got the Fraser temper, son,’ his father would tell him. ‘Keep it in check like I have.’

  Connor assumed keeping it in check meant being an emotionally aloof hypocrite, who thought nothing of ranting at his wife about ‘the useless fucks at the hospital’ who refused to see his genius. With the warnings about his grandfather ringing in his ears, Connor had become a shy, even introverted boy who loved to read, hated PE classes and had an aversion to football that bordered on pathological. He had been an obvious target for the bigger kids, the bullies that circled the playground looking for easy prey. And Connor took it. The punches, the slaps and the insults, he took it all, some part of him knowing that the pain would pass and the other kids would get bored soon enough.

  But then had come that day, and everything changed.

  It was lunchtime, and Connor had retreated to his preferred spot at the back of the school playing fields behind a clot of bushes that shielded him from prying eyes. He was planning to read while he ate his packed lunch, a sandwich his mum had prepared for him with about as much enthusiasm as he now picked at it. Not that he blamed her; after last night, and the muffled, angry exchanges he had heard between his parents as he lay in his bed, enthusiasm had been in short supply in the Fraser household. His dad had been long gone by the time Connor trudged down the stairs, but the fragile smile hi
s mum had given him as she’d passed him his lunchbox had combined with the stagnant pressure in the house to give Connor a grinding headache.

  All he wanted was to be left alone, to lose himself with Sherlock Holmes as he unpicked the mystery of The Hound of the Baskervilles, let the story soothe his mind and drown the echoes of the sharp, angry shouts from the night before. But it was as if the story had locked its doors on him. Like a stripper suddenly turned coy, it refused to reveal itself, the words on the page just lines of text put together.

  The voice was like steel wool being scraped across marble. ‘Hey, Connor, how you doing? Good book?’

  He looked up to see Gordon Jeffrey standing over him, his face pulled into the same smile Connor had seen on his mum’s face that morning. Fragile, contrived and filled with just enough false hope to make you at once pity and hate the person wearing it.

  Gordon was a small, scrawny kid whose body would have made a scarecrow look buff by comparison. He had been at the school for a couple of months, having just moved to the area from Newcastle – his dad had taken a job at an accountancy firm in town. While they weren’t friends, Connor knew Gordon from English classes in which they sat side by side. They had exchanged typical adolescent chit-chat, girls, books, films, recognizing on some level that they were both outsiders.

  ‘Hey, Gordon,’ Connor said, squinting up. ‘Yeah, it’s okay, just not really getting it today, you know?’

  If Gordon had picked up the hint, he didn’t show it. He glanced once over his shoulder, a quick, birdlike motion, then focused back on Connor. ‘Oh, ah, that’s not good. Hate it when that happens. I . . .’ He trailed off as another figure appeared from the school side of the bushes, Connor suddenly understanding Gordon’s desperation to be sociable.

  His name was Stephen Franklin. At fourteen years old, he was already head and shoulders above everyone in his year, his glands twisting the soft putty of his child’s body into something rougher, crueller. He seemed to revel in the power his size gave him, and was known for beating up any smaller, weaker kid who was unfortunate enough to get in his way. Instinctively, Connor got up as Franklin approached.

  ‘So what the fuck’s this?’ the bigger boy asked. ‘What you two bummers doing all the way back here? You letting this English fuck suck you off, Connie?’

  Connor felt irritation prickle down his back and across his scalp. Connie. He hated that nickname. Not that he would let any of them know it. He forced a mirthless laugh through his lips. Flat, atonal. ‘Aye, right,’ he said. ‘Good joke. Fuck knows what the wee cunt is after. I just wanted to be left alone.’

  Gordon was looking at Connor as though seeing him for the first time. His face became a thin sketch of betrayal, mouth wide, skin pale, tears welling in his eyes.

  ‘Aye, fuckin’ thought as much,’ Franklin said, nodding. ‘Someone should teach him some fuckin’ manners.’

  ‘Aye,’ Connor agreed, closing in on both Gordon and Franklin. His head was pulsing now, a bright blade of pain stabbing into his mind with each breath. The day was over-bright, over-sharp, as though the world was nothing more than a collection of harsh angles and jutting edges to skewer him. In that instant, he was back in his house, his parents’ angry voices rising up through the floorboards, bouncing off the walls, leaving the air in his room bruised as the pressure grew and grew and . . .

  ‘Would you no’ just fuck off!’ Connor roared, lashing out at Gordon with a kick. He whimpered and spun away reflexively, Connor’s foot glancing off his hip even as he broke into a run.

  Franklin gave a laugh that sounded like shards of glass being rattled in a tin can. His face was red, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he struggled for breath. ‘Ah, that was fuckin’ priceless, man!’ he gasped. ‘Did ye see the wee—’

  Connor exploded. He was moving before he even knew the decision had been made, Franklin totally unprepared for the assault. He lashed out frantically, driving his fists into Franklin’s face. Franklin tried to fight back, but Connor ignored the blows, punching faster, harder. He cried out in a voice that was not his own, the pressure from the night before building behind his eyes as tears stung. In that moment, all he wanted was Franklin to feel his own pain, to use his rage to blot out the memory of his parents’ argument and the look of betrayal on Gordon Jeffrey’s face.

  A teacher broke them up a few moments later, attracted by the screams of kids who had sprinted across the playground to see what was going on behind the bushes.

  ‘Ye’re a fuckin’ psycho, Fraser!’ Franklin yelled, his voice trembling with shock as they were pulled apart. Connor saw the blood pouring from his nose and the welts forming on his face, and felt an almost irresistible urge to laugh.

  His father had been right. He did have a temper.

  Thanks to some fast talking by his father, not to mention the exchange of a brotherly handshake with Franklin’s father, no one was expelled from school. Arrangements were made to keep Franklin and Connor in separate classes, but it was a worthless move. A typical bully, Stephen Franklin stayed clear of the boy who had shattered his tough-guy image, made him mortal in front of his classmates. Connor, meanwhile, became something of a school legend – the boy who had faced the playground monster and defeated him.

  He had found his new popularity disquieting and confusing, his young mind unable to process the contradiction of his classmates admiring him for actions that seemed to drive an even greater wedge between him and his father.

  And despite it all, despite the attention, the nods and the claps on the back, Gordon Jeffrey never spoke to him again.

  Now Connor took a shower, trying to scald away the memories that flooded his mind. They were the last thing he needed, especially this weekend. Towelling himself as he stepped into the living room, he flicked on the TV, channel-hopped until he hit Sky News, and was just turning away when he paused and looked back at the screen. It was a live shot from outside Stirling University, police tape draped across the entrance, cars parked at diagonals to deter vehicles from driving in, and officers patrolling the cordon. The caption at the bottom of the screen read: ‘BODY FOUND AT UNIVERSITY CAMPUS’, with a second line of text below: ‘Second violent death in Stirling in two days’.

  He turned the sound up, perched on the edge of the sofa. A grim-faced newsreader with hair two shades too dark and teeth three shades too white stared sternly into the camera. ‘The discovery was made at the Stirling Court Hotel in the university’s grounds at approximately six a.m. On the line we have Donna Blake, a local reporter in Stirling. Donna?’

  There was a moment’s pause, then the same picture of Donna Blake that Connor had seen the day before filled the screen, accompanied by a redundant caption verifying that the newsreader had been right and Donna Blake was indeed a freelance journalist.

  ‘Yes, Douglas,’ she said, the tiredness of the day before replaced by an almost breathless excitement that Connor knew all too well. ‘It’s my understanding that a guest at the Stirling Court Hotel discovered the body at the foot of a fire escape at the rear of the hotel this morning.’

  The picture of Donna disappeared, replaced by a still shot of SOCOs milling around on a section of manicured grass, the naked metal of a fire escape glinting in the background, white screens in the foreground to prevent anyone seeing what they were working on. Looking at the shot, Connor guessed it was taken with a powerful zoom lens, probably free-standing rather than fixed on a tripod, given the slight blurriness.

  A series of images, mostly variations on the same scene, scrolled across the screen as Donna kept talking: ‘While police have yet to make an official statement, sources have told me that DCI Malcolm Ford, who is leading the investigation into the discovery of a body at Cowane’s Hospital in the centre of Stirling, is due to give a full statement within the hour. I also understand that . . .’

  Connor stiffened, Donna’s voice fading as though the TV had been muted. His jaw dropped open, tendrils of panic snaking around his heart and squeezing. No . . . He fu
mbled for the remote, hit rewind, then froze the shot. He approached the TV warily, as though it might suddenly explode.

  No, it can’t be.

  He reached his hand out, tracing the shape of the object on the screen.

  You could be wrong, a small voice whispered urgently in his mind. You could be wrong.

  But he wasn’t. He knew it.

  At first glance, it was an innocuous shot. While the area at the foot of the stairs had been cordoned off behind white barriers, the stairwell remained exposed, merely cordoned off with police tape. Whoever had taken the photographs had managed to get a close-up of the stairs. On the second step from the bottom a shoe lay on its side, forgotten. Beside it there was a bag, a notepad and pens spilling from it in a frozen cascade. And on the step below, at the bottom of the shot, there was a book.

  A book that told Connor he was connected to this murder in ways he didn’t want to think about, and to a killer who was intimately connected to him.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ford slammed the phone down and glared at it. In the incident room outside his office, he heard a momentary silence, keyboards and conversations interrupted by the abrupt end to a conversation with an unknown caller.

  Not that it took a room full of detectives to figure out who was on the call, and why. Chief Superintendent Doyle had seen the Sky report, the ‘eye-witness’ pictures from the scene and, after a bollocking from the chief constable himself, had phoned Ford to pass on the pain. Even in the new streamlined Police Scotland, shite still rolled downhill.

  ‘You’d better get us a quick result on this one now, Malcolm,’ Doyle had said, after he had exhausted his entire, admittedly impressive, repertoire of expletives. ‘And, Christ, there’s the press conference as well. How the hell did she find out we were planning that? Decision was only made on the ground.’