No Man's Land

by Neil Broadfoot

  Donna Blake’s address?

  She flicked on a lamp above the phone, angling the page, trying to see the impressions. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, she could see it wasn’t a number Mark had written down, but a word.

  Or a name.

  She looked around for a pencil, something she could use to rub on the notepad and pick out the markings. She had no idea if it would work but had seen enough TV shows to hope it would. Glancing around, she spotted the small bin under the table and cursed herself.

  She grunted as she bent down and saw a small piece of paper scrunched up into a tight ball clinging to the bin’s plastic lining. She fished it out, put it on the dressing-table and smoothed it.

  Yes. She couldn’t be sure, but she was fairly certain it was the same words she had seen on the indented notepad. They made no immediate sense, but filled her with a strange relief. At least it wasn’t her name – or an address.

  She turned in the chair, grabbed her bag, which she had left beside her on the bed, took out her mobile and tried Mark’s number again. Once more it rang through to his voicemail.

  ‘Mark? It’s me. I’m still in Stirling, still at your room. Call me back, will you?’

  Call finished, she flipped over to the web app, deciding to try to make sense of what she had found written in Mark’s heavy hand. She squinted again at the scrunched-up note, confirming she had read it correctly, then turned to the phone. Keyed in ‘Skye, Dundee, Kenneth Ferguson’ and hit search.

  CHAPTER 67

  Connor drove in silence, hands clenching and easing on the steering wheel in time with the tide of his thoughts. Simon sat silently in the passenger seat, chewing over what Sneddon had told them.

  After ascertaining who he was, Connor and Simon had bundled Sneddon into Donna’s flat, leaving Paulie on guard duty. When the door had swung open, Donna had stepped forward, eyes shimmering with tears, a smile of relief fighting with a grimace as she saw Sneddon. Then she’d caught herself, body stiffening and face hardening.

  Connor understood. It would take an idiot to miss that Donna and Sneddon had a relationship that ran far deeper than merely former colleagues. Given the way she retreated to the living-room door as Connor sat Sneddon on the sofa, creating a barrier between him and the child, it didn’t take much to fill in the gaps. Having him there was an intrusion, a violation of the life she had built since she was with him. If Connor had the time to care, he’d almost feel guilty about bringing Sneddon there.

  Almost.

  It had taken a few minutes to calm the man, convince him he wasn’t in immediate danger. It was time Connor didn’t think he had. But, slowly, the reporter had regained his composure, and then he had told them a story.

  When Donna had left him at his hotel, he had gone back to what he knew, adding in what she had told him. Ferguson’s team of handlers had tried to steer the coverage away from the politician’s links with Helen Russell, so it seemed as good a place as any to start. Checking back in the cuttings from the Westie’s archive, he’d found what he was looking for in coverage from 2014 and the run-up to the independence referendum.

  Connor wasn’t surprised by that. It fitted with what he now knew – what had given him the password for Evans’s laptop.

  As part of the referendum campaign, a series of town-hall-style public meetings had been held around the country. At these events, members of the Yes and No camps faced questions from the public about the case for independence or remaining in the UK. Connor had been in Belfast at the time, but he had followed the coverage. He knew the events could get pretty heated, the debate turning sour and ill-tempered as logic and reason gave way to patriotic fervour, sloganeering and the knee-jerk desire to defend an entrenched position shaped more by the screaming headlines and wall-to-wall TV coverage than any real consideration of the issue.

  While the SNP administration had walked a tightrope at the time, and faced some tough questions on the use of supposedly apolitical civil servants to push a pro-independence line, the party had dutifully wheeled out its big guns for these debates. And one of its biggest guns, literally and figuratively, was Ken Ferguson.

  A bullish debater, Ferguson was seen by the party and the press as a journeyman Nationalist, who had made the transition from the firebrand wing of the party to the measured elder statesman who could make the dispassionate case for independence and a constructive relationship with England: ‘our nearest neighbours and closest friends’. As such, he had been sent around the country, attending events in Dundee, Elgin, Portree and Stirling.

  What Sneddon had found interesting was that, at each of these events, one of the panellists he was debating was Helen Russell. Sneddon had done his best to connect the dots, checking with hotels in the towns and cities, trying to track down footage from the debates to see how the two had interacted, and while what he had found was suggestive, there was nothing concrete.

  That didn’t pose much of an ethical dilemma for Sneddon, whose tabloid instincts were excited by the possibility of a political sex scandal to add spice to a juicy murder. Deciding to take a punt, he had called Ferguson directly, told him what he had found, and asked why he had been so coy about how well he had known Russell. He had recounted the conversation with a pride that swelled his chest and made his eyes glitter from their bruised sockets.

  ‘I played it just right,’ he had told them, pointing at the records he had pulled up on his laptop, ‘asked how long he had known her, had they got close on the campaign trail, any expenses for late-night dinners, drinks, that sort of thing.’

  ‘So why did you run?’ Donna had asked, her voice low and tired. ‘Sounds like a hell of a splash, especially since you tried to help Higgins and Mitchell steer the story away from Russell and Ferguson’s past relationship in the first place. Or were you too scared to write the story that showed you were a sell-out?’

  Anger had flashed in Sneddon’s eyes for a moment, replaced by shame and fear. ‘It wasn’t that,’ he said. ‘Ferguson clammed up pretty quickly, couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. But two minutes after I put the phone down on him, I got a call back. From Mitchell, the special adviser.’

  ‘Ah,’ Donna sneered. ‘What did she say?’

  Sneddon dropped his gaze, digging his thumbnail into the back of his hand. ‘It was weird,’ he said. ‘She told me she’d heard about my call to Ferguson, told me how disappointed she was. Then she started telling me I was a level-headed reporter the party could use, and it would be a shame to lose my head and my prospects over an unsubstantiated story against the minister. After all, look what had happened to Matt Evans when he’d started throwing the insults about.’

  He had looked at Connor then, a desperate pleading in his eyes. ‘Don’t you see? She was threatening me! They got rid of Evans – and all that talk about losing my head? Christ, she was telling me to drop it or I was next.’

  Connor kept quiet. He knew Donna would dismiss it as a coward’s paranoia but, as much as he was coming to despise Sneddon, he knew the other man was right.

  He was being threatened. Just not for the reasons he thought.

  After hearing Sneddon’s story, he had called Ford, not wanting to leave Donna and her child alone while Paulie, still armed with Connor’s gun just in case, made sure Jen got home safely. The detective had agreed to come and take the statement – it was nothing that would stand up, but it was another link in the chain, and Connor wanted it on the record.

  They had left after Ford had arrived, heading back to Connor’s flat. As they drove, Connor was trying to put it all together. It was like doing a jigsaw in the dark. He had all the pieces, could feel them fitting together, but he needed someone or something to flick the light on, let him see the full picture.

  If, that was, he had the courage to look at it.

  CHAPTER 68

  ‘So, are you going to tell me what you found, and what the hell this all means?’

  They were in Connor’s living room, the folder fr
om the radio station on the coffee table. Simon had made himself busy with the drinks, pouring himself another large glass of the wine he had bought. Connor had asked for a large whisky. He had no intention of drinking it, but he wanted the heavy-based short glass Simon would put it in.

  Just in case.

  He took a breath, collected his thoughts. ‘Okay,’ he said, reaching for the folder and opening it, splaying the papers inside across the table like a deck of cards. ‘I think Sneddon was right. Someone doesn’t want the link between Ferguson and Russell exposed. But not for the reason he thinks. See, I found this.’

  He picked up a photograph from the table, studied it. It made sense, really. It was one of the first questions Ford had asked him: had he had any dealings with the Red Hand Defenders? Why? Because the Defenders had known links to Alba Gheal Ann An Aonadh, the ultra-Unionist group that was known to have run joint training camps with the Defenders.

  Training camps just like the one in the picture Connor handed Simon. It was grainy, slightly out of focus, clearly taken on the spur of the moment, then uploaded to a propaganda-filled website in which any face that wasn’t covered with the traditional balaclava or scarf pulled up to the nose had been digitally blurred. But this shot was raw, without any of the faces doctored. It showed a small, tight group of people, mostly young, shaven-headed, brandishing a variety of weapons ranging from pistols to baseball bats. They were standing in a scruffy version of a regimental pose, two flags in the centre – the Red Hand of Ulster and a white flag with the black compass points of the Alba Gheal Ann An Aonadh logo branded swastika-like in the middle. And grinning out of the image were two faces Connor knew.

  Billy Griffin and Helen Russell.

  ‘Fuck,’ Simon whispered. ‘So the first two victims knew each other. And Billy was linked to Evans. But how? And why did someone go so medieval on them?’

  Connor stopped for a second, looking at the picture. That was bothering him too.

  He brushed the thought aside. Focused on what he did know. ‘Think about it. Sneddon said it himself. With all the shit going on with Brexit and talk of a second referendum at any moment, can you imagine what would happen if it came out that a leading government minister – the minister in charge of law and order – was revealed to be a marriage wrecker who was shagging a leading member of a proscribed Unionist terror group? The papers would have a fucking field day, and the pro-independence movement would have a total shit-storm on their hands.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Simon said. ‘I can see it’s embarrassing, but worth killing for? Especially like this? Nah, there’s got to be more to it. Something we’re not seeing.’

  Connor riffled through the papers, mostly background on Russell and Ferguson, written in what he assumed was Evans’s hand. And there was another question – the clothes: why did Evans and Griffin have each other’s clothes in their homes?

  He looked back at the picture. Clothes. That was what had given Connor the password to Evans’s laptop. In the picture, Billy was wearing a Rangers FC top, for a club with a traditionally Unionist background. The club had a nickname, Teddy Bears, and, with the flag-draped toy on Evans’s desk, it had been an obvious connection to make.

  Obvious . . .

  ‘Gimme the laptop,’ Connor said, reaching across the folder for the flash drive he had found. Simon leant down, picked up the laptop from the floor and passed it to him. Connor powered it up and waited while it booted. After a few moments it revealed a standard desktop littered with an assortment of Word and Excel files that looked like broadcast scripts and timetables. He flicked into the web browser and its history, found nothing more than a collection of news websites, Amazon and searches on Russell and Ferguson stored there. But again he felt the pull of recognition, something about files he had seen earlier . . .

  He slotted the flash drive in, waited for the icon to appear on the desktop, double-clicked on it and scanned the directory. They were .mov files, uploaded from a smartphone. Connor clicked on one and watched as the drab interior of Billy Griffin’s flat filled the screen. He was sitting opposite the wall where the missing picture had hung. He smiled nervously at the phone, laughed, waved. Then a voice came from off-camera, a voice Connor recognized from Valley FM as Matt Evans’s.

  ‘Okay, Billy, no rush. Tell me again about the training camp.’

  Billy fidgeted in his seat, rubbed his hands on his legs, glanced nervously at the camera. ‘I’m no’ sure I should . . .’

  A blur as a figure passed in front of the camera, walking diagonally across the view, then dropping to his knees in front of Billy. Matt Evans ran his hand up Billy’s legs in a slow, comforting caress. It made sense of the shared wardrobes, the teddy bear on his desk at work. ‘Look, Billy, I’m not trying to force you into anything here,’ he said, his voice radio-sonorous and soothing. ‘If you don’t want to do this, then I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. But if we do this, handle it right, we can get everything we wanted, everything we’ve spoken about. Away from here. Clean. Together.’

  Billy nodded, the gesture so full of blind hope that the whisky soured in Connor’s stomach. ‘All right, Matt,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good,’ Evans said, returning Billy’s smile. He stood up, placed a hand on his shoulder, and leant in, a reassuring peck on the lips. Then he turned and walked behind the camera again.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ he said, the voice colder now.

  Billy knotted his hands in his lap, studied them for where to start. ‘Aye, well, it was like I said before, like. I heard about it from the boys at the game, got into it that way. Signed up when I could, wasnae easy to get in, they’re suspicious bastards, but with the way things were then, I wasnae surprised. Anyway, I went to a couple of meetings, then got asked away on one of these “outdoor retreats”, you know, meant to be all camping and team building, but it’s just a cover to get you trained up with the kit and the fightin’.’

  He droned on about the details of the camp, weapons, crap food, too much booze, lots of propaganda about the ‘indy scum who want to rip our country apart’. Connor skimmed through the files, noting that the location of filming occasionally changed, swapped for a brighter, more homely flat with other pictures on the wall. Evans’s home, surely. It was mostly the same content, Billy bragging about his growing links with both 4AG and the Red Hand, how they had given him an important assignment: he was to make a real statement after the independence referendum. ‘Aye,’ he said, cheeks reddening with pride. ‘They wanted me to make a real scene, show those Yes bastards who they were dealing with. Told me to get a flag, make sure everyone saw me light the fucker up.’

  Again, Evans’s voice from off-camera: ‘Who told you, Billy?’

  ‘That Russell bint,’ Billy said, staring into the camera, his eyes growing dark and sly, a rat-like intelligence seeming to sharpen his features. ‘But it wasnae just her. See, she told me we had friends in high places. And one of her pals, who everyone thought was a Yesser, was really a friend of ours, and would see me right.’

  Connor paused the clip, took a swig of whisky before he had even thought about it. There it was. Billy Griffin claiming Helen Russell knew that a key Nationalist was actually a Unionist sympathizer. Ferguson? Given their links, probably. At any rate, it was explosive pillow talk, and information worth killing for.

  On an impulse, Connor clicked back into the web history, ran through it until he saw what he was looking for, clicked on it and held his breath hoping, hoping . . .

  Yes. One of the previously visited sites was for a gmail account. But Evans had been sloppy, closing the window but not logging out of the account, meaning it opened automatically. A lot of it was crap, internet shopping, Nigerian millionaires and promises to ‘extend his manhood’. Connor skimmed a page, then clicked on the sent items. Again, nothing of interest. But on the left, in the folders, there was one marked ‘Handy’. Connor clicked on it, hit the jackpot.

  It was a back-up of the recordings Evans had taken of Billy and
sent to himself, no doubt as insurance. But there was also a message, simply entitled ‘Proposal’. It had been sent a week ago to Lets4Kennynatsnper@gmail.com. Not difficult to decipher.

  Connor clicked on it and read:

  Sir,

  I tried to call you earlier on but was rudely fobbed off. You may know, I presented Nightline on EBA and have recently moved to host a show in Stirling. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance, a charming young man who I met during my time in Edinburgh and who is now safely residing in my care. He told me quite an illuminating story about you and your links to a Unionist group that is best not mentioned in polite company. I must say, I was shocked to hear you would associate with such people, let alone agree to help them.

  As you will appreciate, this is a story of significant public interest, and I am very keen to get your input. Depending on what you say, I may be persuaded that there is a greater story to pursue, but that will take sum talking on your behalf. However, if I do not hear from you within twenty-four hours, I will make this story public.

  Connor sat back, Simon craning over him to read the file. So that was it. Blackmail.

  What was it MacKenzie had said? Billy was drug-dealing in Edinburgh? No doubt he’d run into Evans as a client and the two had got talking. Something had happened between them, taking the relationship from merely user and dealer, though from the way he had handled Billy on the tape, Connor knew Evans was both. At some point, Billy had told Evans his story. And all Evans had seen was a payday – ‘that will take sum talking’. So he had approached Ferguson, who had moved to shut him up and sever all links to him. Permanently.

  Connor closed his eyes, saw the obese, sweating form of Ferguson standing in front of the cameras. He wasn’t the killer – there was no way he was capable of it. The physical exertion of moving a body, let alone decapitating it, would give the fat fuck a heart attack, so who . . .