No Man's Land

by Neil Broadfoot

  Just the sort of workforce MacKenzie preferred.

  From what he had been able to piece together, Griffin had realized Glasgow was scorched earth for him and headed east, where he’d set himself up as a small-time drug-dealer. He had kept himself to himself, until a run-in with one of the bigger dealers in the city – an old-school gangster called Albert Swanson, who had built an empire for himself over the last thirty years – had seen him driven out of Edinburgh with his tail between his legs and a couple of teeth clutched in his hand.

  For reasons no one understood, he had surfaced again in Stirling, getting back to his dealing. MacKenzie had reached out to a few contacts in the local pub trade, found that Griffin had a reputation as a quiet dealer who made no trouble and was happy to give landlords a cut of his take in return for an easy time from the doormen. And it was this arrangement that had led MacKenzie to the address that Connor and Simon now sat outside – one of the landlords of a city-centre nightclub Griffin dealt in was renting him the flat, which explained why Griffin didn’t appear on any electoral roll or property register. He was living under the radar, effectively in the back garden of the prison service.

  Connor had to admire the balls in that.

  Simon looked up at the block of flats, the pebbledash jaundiced in the lights cast from the prison, the windows like dark, empty pits. ‘You sure about this?’ he asked. ‘Yer man said the cops hadn’t been able to find this place yet, so if we go in there, we’re technically polluting a potential crime scene.’

  Connor squinted up at the flats. Simon had a point. He’d promised Ford he wasn’t going to make waves, yet here he was, about to trigger a tsunami. And then there was Simon to consider. He was still a serving officer of the PSNI: if any of this washed back on him, it could destroy his career.

  If, of course, what he had told Connor was true.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Connor said. ‘I’m done holding my dick, waiting for something to happen. We’re here. Let’s take a look. You can stay with the car if you want.’

  Simon gave him a hard stare, cocked an eyebrow. ‘Fuck ye,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry I lied to you, Connor, really I am. But I’m here to help. That’s the truth. If Jameson hadn’t called me, I’d still be here. You know that.’

  Connor nodded. It was true. The man he had known in Belfast, the man who had covered for him when he had beaten Hughes to a pulp, would have done anything for him, dropped everything to stand at his side at a moment’s notice. But was the same man sitting beside him now? Or was he someone else, with motives Connor couldn’t grasp?

  He was out of the car before he knew he was going to move, driven to act by the desire to get away from his thoughts. He waited for Simon to slip around the front of the Audi to join him, then clicked on the car alarm and glanced around the street. Quiet, just as he wanted.

  ‘Flat three, second floor,’ he said, jutting his jaw towards a peeling white-painted door at the end of a small pathway that was more weeds and dying grass than concrete. Simon sighed, then started walking, the meaning in Connor’s words clear – you want to come with me, fine, but I’m not turning my back on you.

  On the wall to the left of the door a panel was filled with three rows of buttons, each a buzzer to one of the flats. Most of the names were faded, the tag for Griffin’s flat missing. Connor tried the door. It rattled on an old lock. He gave it a sharp nudge and it opened. Exchanged a glance with Simon, who shrugged and slipped inside. Connor followed, keeping his back to the wall, minimizing his exposure to the stairwell. He reached back and touched the gun nestled into the small of his back, fought the urge to draw it.

  They made their way up the staircase, navigating the obstacle course of kids’ bikes, scooters and footballs that littered the landing. Got to the second floor, and found the flat they were looking for at the end of a corridor that glittered a sickly, industrial green from years of repeated repainting with a cheap paint that was meant to deter graffiti.

  They took up positions at either side of the door, glancing over their shoulders to the other end of the corridor and the flat opposite. Last thing they needed was a nosy neighbour poking their head out.

  Connor inspected the lock. It was a standard Yale below a cheap door handle, a simple, slender bar of steel that reminded Connor of his school days. He looked across at Simon, nodded. A Yale lock didn’t present many problems, and he had a few options. Given the construction of the door, he could probably shoulder his way in, nothing dramatic, just a steady increase of pressure until it gave under his weight. But that would create noise. No, better to take the silent approach.

  He knelt, Simon taking a half-step around him to shield him from view. He shrugged off the prickling of unease he felt at turning his back on his friend, and slid two long, slender rods of metal from his pocket. Lock-picking wasn’t difficult, especially on something as cheap and generic as this. Just feel for the tumblers, align and turn. No problem at all.

  Except . . .

  Connor studied the lock for a second, its glossy sheen. He wiped a finger tentatively across it. It came away greasy.

  He reached up, tried the door handle. It swung down easily and the door opened. He stood up, held out his finger to Simon, rubbed it with his thumb. ‘WD40,’ he said.

  Simon nodded, message received. Lock-pickers sometimes used lubricants on old locks to make them easier to pick. The lock had been picked before, and whoever had done it had left it open.

  Connor stepped into the gloom, hugging the wall, making sure he kept his back tight to it. Simon followed him, taking the other wall, easing the front door shut as he stepped inside.

  The pencil light Connor carried stabbed into the gloom, revealing a small, neat hallway with exposed floorboards and a coat rack running up one side. To their left was an open door that hinted at a bedroom beyond, and to their right, another open door led to a bathroom.

  They nodded to each other, took a room each. Swept them, then moved back into the hall.

  ‘Clear,’ Connor said of the bedroom, which was a stark room, with only a bed and a small bedside table.

  ‘Clear,’ Simon echoed.

  They moved forward, down the hall to the room at the end. Connor felt a dull electrical throb in the back of his head as he looked at the door. Again, the weight of the gun pressed into his back. He looked at Simon, nodded, then swung the door open. Simon stepped in first, dropping to a low crouch in case someone was waiting for them. Connor mirrored him, stepping into a long living room-cum-kitchen that took up the entire width of the flat. He looked at the windows that made up the far wall, noted the curtains were drawn tight. Closed the door then felt along the wall for a light switch. Flicked it on to reveal an unremarkable living space – a tired beige couch and armchair faced a large television, with what looked like an old record player sitting beside it. In front of the couch was a coffee-table, a mug on top of it.

  Connor looked around, a vague confusion tugging his thoughts. Had he been wrong about the door? Had it just been left open by mistake, the lock not picked? As with the bedroom he had checked, there was no sign that anything had been moved or disturbed, that someone had broken in to search for something.

  ‘Well, this is disappointing,’ Simon said, glancing around.

  ‘Let’s take a proper look,’ Connor said, moving into the room.

  They split it up, Connor taking the small bookshelf behind the TV unit, Simon retreating to the kitchen area behind a low breakfast bar. Connor scanned the collection of books, surprised by what he found: row upon row of volumes on Scotland’s history, ranging from the commercial to the academic. He scanned the shelves again, confirming that what he was looking for wasn’t there – no fiction and, specifically, no copy of Misery. There was also a smattering of DVDs and these were more of what Connor expected – action movies and sci-fi, along with a couple of martial-arts films.

  He ran his finger along the spines of the books, then turned back into the room. What was he looking for anyway? Something that
explained why Billy Griffin had been the first to die, and what his connection to Helen Russell was. But what would that be?

  Frustrated, he stepped back and crouched to inspect the record player beside the television. Nothing remarkable, an old-style variable-speed turntable and a random collection of seventies rock and eighties power anthems, from AC/DC to Guns N’ Roses. He flicked through the records, pushed them back into the rack until they sat flush.

  It was, Connor thought, a strange collection, at odds with the books he had found. And something about the sleeves nagged at him. Each album had a small red tag on its top right corner, a six-digit number printed on it. Connor considered. Second-hand? Bought from an auction maybe? The tags holding lot numbers?

  ‘Anything?’ Simon called, as he emerged from the kitchen.

  ‘Not that I can see,’ Connor said, glancing to the couch as he considered pulling the cushions out and looking beneath it. But, again, what would be the point? If the place had been broken into and searched, it had been done by professionals who had left no trace of their work. They had either found what they were looking for or nothing at all.

  He stood up, glanced around the room. At the bare walls behind the couch, the seats tucked neatly beneath the breakfast bar, the reclining chair moulded to a man’s shape over time, the . . .

  Connor darted his head back. He took a step forward, ran his hand up the wall. Yes. There. Sticking out of it, at eye level, a small nail, painted the same colour as the rest of the wall. He looked closely, noted the faintest discoloration around the area, signs of a picture that had been hung there, but only recently.

  He looked around the room, thinking. Was that what was missing? What whoever had broken in was looking for? A picture on a wall? And, if so, what did that picture show, and how did it explain Billy Griffin’s role in this?

  ‘Looks like this is a busted flush, Connor,’ Simon said.

  ‘Maybe. Come on. Let’s take a proper look at that bedroom.’

  They moved back into the hall, Connor careful to switch off the living-room light before he opened the door. He stepped into the bedroom, saw the curtains there were closed too. Coincidence? Or had whoever had been there drawn the curtains to give them more privacy to search the place? Either way, it was a gift he wasn’t going to ignore. He flicked on the light switch, a naked bulb flaring into life.

  The room was bigger than Connor had thought on his first look, dwarfing the double bed and cabinet that were pushed up against the wall. The bed was made, smooth and creaseless in the way only someone who had served time in either the military or prison could achieve.

  Simon stepped forward, around the bed, heading for the chest of drawers. He slid them open and peered in. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Cheap pants and socks and . . . oh, wait . . .’ He straightened up, holding a plastic bag that contained a small amount of white powder. Connor guessed it wasn’t icing sugar.

  ‘Party favours,’ Simon said. ‘Makes sense if this guy was dealing, like you said. Brought some home for himself.’

  Connor nodded. Not unusual for a dealer to test the product. And it didn’t seem like there was much else to do in this place. He got the impression it was less a home, more a barracks – a place to sleep between shifts. He gestured to the double doors of a built-in wardrobe on the far wall of the room. ‘Let’s have a look in there, then call it,’ he said.

  The wardrobe was as Spartan as the rest of the flat: three pairs of jeans hung from cheap wire hangers, alongside four unironed shirts. Above them, an assortment of what looked like T-shirts and jumpers were neatly stacked. Again, no sign anyone had been here or looked through the clothes.

  Connor stood back, a thought occurring to him. Why would they look here? If someone had broken in to get hold of a specific item – the missing picture in the living room – then would they bother searching the rest of the flat? Why risk it? No. They would come for what they wanted and leave.

  Which raised the question: could they have missed something here?

  He reached forward, pulled out the first pile of T-shirts and placed them on the bed.

  ‘Have a look through them, will you?’ he said to Simon, as he took out the second pile and placed it beside the first. The shelf empty, Connor ran his hand around it, probing the corners. He sighed with frustration as he found nothing.

  He looked at the laundry basket in the bottom corner of the wardrobe, pulled it open. Nothing, just white underwear and a T-shirt at the bottom.

  He turned back to the bed, where Simon had spread the first pile of T-shirts. Nothing remarkable – a few designer labels and some older ones with the logos of the same bands Connor had seen in the record collection.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ Simon said, reaching for the second pile. Connor nodded, his eyes drawn to the scattered T-shirts, then back to the jeans in the cupboard. An itch in his mind, something . . .

  ‘Here, hold on, what’s this?’ Simon said, pulling Connor from his thoughts. He was holding up a small piece of plastic, about the size of a credit card, a tatty red lanyard hanging from it.

  Simon passed it to Connor. It was just a standard security pass, with a passport-style photograph, the type any number of office workers slipped around their necks every day and forgot. But Connor knew it wasn’t just a security pass. It was a key. He looked back at the T-shirts on the bed, the scene making sense to him now, just like the tags on the records in the living room.

  He stepped back to the wardrobe, checked the jeans hanging there. Like the T-shirts, they were in two sizes – 32-inch waist on two pairs, 38-inch on the other. He stepped past Simon to the chest of drawers, knowing what he would find. Pants in two drawers, not separated by colour or make, but by size.

  Two people sharing one set of drawers.

  The picture might have gone, but Connor had a good idea now of who it had featured. A glance at the headshot on the security pass confirmed it – in the image, he was wearing the AC/DC T-shirt that was now lying on the bed. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s tidy up and get out of here.’

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘To talk to Donna Blake,’ Connor replied. ‘She called me earlier on and I haven’t got back to her yet, but we need to speak to her now.’

  ‘Why?’ Simon asked, roughly refolding the T-shirts and stuffing them back into the cupboard.

  Connor held up the security pass. ‘Because maybe she can tell us about this. About why Matt Evans was leaving his pass for the radio station and changes of clothes at Billy Griffin’s flat.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Simon said, realization spreading across his face. ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘Exactly,’ Connor said. ‘Matt and Billy were connected. Maybe intimately. There’s a picture missing from the living room. I’m betting that’s what whoever broke in here was looking for. But why were they so determined to hide the link between Matt and Billy? And why did they have to die for it?’

  CHAPTER 62

  Ford was at home, stomach heavy with a dinner he had made for Mary. He was no chef, but he was competent, and the sight of him in the kitchen after the events of the last few days had seemed to put Mary at ease.

  They chatted as he cooked, sharing a bottle of white wine he had picked up along with the ingredients for the meal. The closest they got to discussing the murders was when Mary had asked about ‘the man at the uni’. ‘I hope he’s a new colleague, Malcolm,’ she had said, smiling at him over the rim of the glass. ‘He’s big enough and ugly enough to look after you, especially at the moment.’

  Now, sitting in his chair, Mary dozing on the sofa in front of a film she had insisted they watch together, Ford’s mind turned back to Connor Fraser. Just what was Fraser to him? A witness? A suspect? Or, as Mary had said, a colleague of some kind?

  From the hall, he heard his mobile buzz. He shot a glance at Mary, saw she was undisturbed by the sound. He grunted as he got to his feet, the weariness of the last three days making his legs alien and heavy. He got to the hall, fished in his coat p
ocket and found his phone. Smiled in spite of himself when he saw who was calling. Speak of the devil. ‘Fraser, funny you should call.’

  ‘DCI Ford, thanks for picking up,’ Connor said. The echo on the line told Ford he was using a hands-free, the background noise that he was driving. ‘I need to ask you a question.’

  Again, Ford was irritated. Just who did this guy think he was, assuming he could ask questions of a serving detective? And on what? The strength of a favour to a friend? ‘Go on,’ he said, his tone conveying he reserved the right not to answer.

  ‘Matt Evans’s place. Have you taken an inventory at his flat yet?’

  ‘What? Why would you ask if—’

  ‘DCI Ford, please, this is important. No dicking around. I might be on to something here. The flat. Did you take an inventory?’

  ‘Not personally,’ Ford said, hearing the resentment in his tone, not caring. ‘I’d been sidelined by that point, but I know it was on the actions list at the case conference. Why? What’s this about? What have you found?’

  ‘Can you access the inventory? Check it?’

  ‘Why? What are you looking for? And why should I help you? You said you weren’t going to go poking around, Fraser, and yet here you are . . .’

  Fraser’s voice rose, partly to compensate for the increase in engine noise, partly from anger. ‘Look, I’ll make you a bet. You check the log. You’ll find something that doesn’t fit. There’s going to be two sizes of clothes in that flat, I’m guessing thirty-two- and thirty-eight-inch men’s trousers. Looking at his pictures, my money’s on Evans being the thirty-eight. If I’m right, call me back and tell me what I need to know.’

  Ford felt his pulse rise, impatience and curiosity overwhelming him. What did it matter if he helped him? He was off the case and, from the sound of it, Fraser had made more progress than he or anyone else had been able to.