Shallow Water

by Hunter J Walker

  Julie sat down opposite McKenzie and he remained standing by the door. Slippery Sam was on the offensive right from the off. ‘My client is in no state to be interviewed,’ she snapped at Julie and then looked Douglas directly in the eye.

  He smiled benignly at her. ‘Let’s ask Mr McKenzie how he feels.’ The doctor’s report had assured Douglas that McKenzie was capable of being interviewed, but there was no harm in him confirming this.

  McKenzie opened his mouth to speak for the first time and Douglas could see a gap between the swollen lips where his two upper front teeth should have been. ‘I’m OK to give a statement. I want to get this done, Mr Ashburner,’ he said.

  Douglas looked Slippery Sam in the eye. ‘Shall we start?’ He took her glare as a yes and nodded to Julie to start the tape. She pressed the start button on the recorder.

  ‘In view of Mr McKenzie’s injuries we are recording this interview. For the tape: present at this interview are DC Douglas Ashburner, DC Julie Bryce, Gordon McKenzie and Samantha Price of Aitken, Price and McIver. Commencing interview at fourteen thirty-one. Mr McKenzie, are you aware of the reasons for this interview?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Ashburner,’ Gordon McKenzie replied.

  ‘Do you consider yourself well enough to be interviewed?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Ashburner.’

  ‘Do you wish to tell us how you came by your injuries?’

  ‘I fell down some stairs.’

  ‘Do you wish to make a statement?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Ashburner.’

  ‘Then please proceed, Gordon, you don’t mind if I call you Gordon?’

  ‘It was all a mistake, Mr Ashburner; I didn’t know it was yourself.’

  ‘Please relate the incident in your own words, Gordon.’

  ‘On the Monday night when the Polis came in through the front door of the Blind Piper, I just followed the punters out the back way…’

  *****

  The afternoon sun, beating on this side of the building, warmed the room and Slippery Sam removed her jacket and deftly placed it on the back of her chair. The pink silk shirt strained across her chest, the buttons stressed to breaking point by the weight of her breasts as she leant towards Julie. He could see that Julie had a clear view down Slippery Sam’s magnificent cleavage. Gordon McKenzie’s confession had ended by this point and Julie was writing the last bit of his statement when Douglas decided to take a stab in the dark. ‘Tell us about the dodgy whisky business, Gordon.’

  ‘Dodgy whisky, what basis do you have for questioning my client about this rubbish?’ Slippery Sam snarled at him.

  ‘Well you see, a couple of enterprising men had a bottling plant they kept on the back of an articulated trailer and every so often, at different places round the country, they’d hire a warehouse and set it up. They’d run off vodka, whisky, rum – you name it and they would bottle it for you. They used biofuel alcohol from South America and just added water and flavouring to make it taste a bit like the real thing. They skipped paying VAT and Excise Duty, so it’s cheap.’

  Slippery Sam turned towards him. ‘And what has my client got to do with that?’

  ‘I know the men visited the Blind Piper and, in my view, they weren’t there for a convivial drink. So, Gordon, did they offer you discount spirits?’

  McKenzie raised his head and nodded.

  ‘For the tape, Mr McKenzie nodded,’ Douglas said. ‘And soon you were getting all your spirits from them and, a month or so later, the wheels came off their operation.’

  ‘Are you joking, constable? This is not a matter for levity’ Slippery Sam snapped.

  Douglas nodded at her. ‘Quite, Ms Price, I was referring to the crash on the M8 when two sets of the wheels on the trailer of an articulated vehicle came off and the resulting debris blocked the motorway. This apparent accident ended the supply of cheap spirits.’

  ‘Apparent accident?’ Slippery Sam said.

  ‘Either they were very careless with the maintenance or someone tampered with the wheel nuts.’

  McKenzie’s head slumped closer to the table.

  ‘Come on, Gordon, let’s get it all off your chest in one go.’

  Slippery Sam put a hand on his arm. ‘I advise you to say nothing, Gordon,’

  Luckily for Douglas, Gordon ignored the advice.

  *****

  An hour later the interview was over and McKenzie was taken down to the custody suite. Douglas left the interview room, but Slippery Sam’s was after him in a flash and cornered him, her nostrils flaring as she glared into his eyes. ‘Fallen down the stairs? I don’t think so, only if was a ten-storey high-rise and he bounced off every step from the top to the bottom.’

  Douglas tried to move away. ‘Ms Price, the Doctor examined him and it was his opinion the bruising is superficial. Mr McKenzie has been offered Hospital treatment three times and declined each time. He has stated, on tape, that he fell down a flight of steps and no other person was involved; if he declines to change his statement and in the absence of any witnesses, we have no basis for an investigation.’

  ‘That, Constable Ashburner, is a matter of opinion. I know that man was beaten.’

  ‘If he was, it was not by us.’

  She was standing close to him and Douglas looked down from her eyes and glanced down her cleavage. He quickly brought his eyes up, but she had seen the look.

  ‘Men, they’re pathetic!’ she snorted and turned away.

  Douglas watched her figure as she stalked off down the corridor, her high heels clicking and her hips swinging.

  ‘She has a nice arse, pity she’s such a terrible person,’ Julie commented as she joined him in the corridor. ‘And not a member of your fan club.’

  ‘She might be one of yours, Julie,’ Douglas said and grinned at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you really saying you didn’t see it? It was obvious.’

  ‘Douglas, what was obvious?’

  ‘She fancies you.’

  ‘Keep your voice down…she did not say anything that could be construed in that way.’

  ‘She might not have said it, but her body language was shouting it.’

  Julie prodded him in the chest with a finger. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘She was sweeping her hair back all the time and showing you her tits.’

  ‘Douglas, if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’ll be in a worst state than McKenzie. I promise you.’

  ‘Come on, Julie. I can’t help it if Slippery Sam fancies you,’ he replied. ‘Ow…’

  *****

  Douglas left Julie to complete the paperwork and fetched her a tea from the machine to make up for his comments about Slippery Sam.

  ‘Don’t think that’s sufficient grovelling, Douglas Ashburner. You can buy the drinks tonight,’ Julie said as he put the cup on the desk.

  ‘I don’t know if I can make it tonight.’

  ‘You’d better, just to make up for that interview; my hand has cramp after all that writing. Why did he have to go on; long winded wasn’t in it.’

  ‘OK, I’ll come for a while.’

  She flashed him a smile and then nodded towards the approaching figure of DS McCray.

  ‘So?’ McCray said.

  Douglas nudged Julie with his arm. ‘You did all the hard work, you tell the Sergeant.’

  ‘He confessed, with details, to the attack on Douglas…also, VAT fraud, filing false accounts with Revenue and Customs and numerous offences relating to the supply of counterfeit spirits – although I’m not sure exactly which offences he has committed on that bit. I think it depends on how bad the stuff really was and whether it poisoned anyone.’

  ‘Did he implicate the Doherty’s?’ McCray asked.

  ‘He did the opposite, he claimed it was his own idea and no other persons were involved in any way.’ Julie replied.

  ‘You couldn’t shift him on that?’

  ‘No, we tried, but he was adamant about it.’

  ‘Damn, did he say who did
him over?’

  ‘No, he claims he fell down a set of stairs somewhere and he can’t remember where and we couldn’t shift him on that either.’

  ‘Well, finish writing it up.’

  *****

  At seven Douglas left work and walked slowly towards George Square with Julie. She followed him as he entered the bar and when he stopped to scan the crowd, Julie ran into his back. He looked round and really noticed the large bag she was carrying. ‘What have you got in there, Julie?’

  ‘Something I want to show you,’ Julie said brushing past him and headed in the direction of the toilets.

  Douglas struggled through the crowd to the bar and ordered a lager for himself and a Barcardi and Coke for Julie. Carrying them through to the edge of the crowd around the bar he looked for a table and saw three women standing up from one table in the far corner of the room and headed straight for it, reaching it just ahead of two middle-aged women who hissed at him in rage. He smiled at them and if looks could kill he would have been struck dead on the spot. Placing the drinks on the table he sat down and took out his phone to ring Susanne.

  Julie re-appeared through the throng and Douglas realised there was something different about her and noticed she was now wearing gold shoes. She stopped in front of him to remove her coat, revealing a skin-tight gold dress. The dress was short at both ends with thin straps. She dropped the coat on the banquette and sat close to him and as she crossed her legs he heard the sound of nylon sliding on nylon.

  ‘Julie, you remember that incident I was involved in on Monday night.’

  ‘I though this dress might cheer you up.’

  ‘It does Julie, but unfortunately McKenzie kicked me in a place that makes that sort of enjoyment painful in the extreme.’

  ‘No pleasure without pain, so they say.’

  ‘In this case I’m afraid the pain wins hands down.’

  ‘You need strong drink to take the pain away.’

  Douglas shrugged. ‘I’m not driving.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes then,’ Julie said and stood up to head in the direction of the bar.

  McCray shouldered his way through the throng and sat at the table opposite Douglas. ‘I found out a bit about Superwoman from a mate over in Edinburgh. She trained in Manchester and moved to Edinburgh two months ago and attended a conversion course. Prior to that she was a PC in Manchester and she worked in the Civil Service before that.’

  ‘What did she do in the Civil Service?’

  ‘Apparently she was an interpreter.’

  ‘What is a language expert doing as a DC in Glasgow?’

  ‘You could be over-thinking this.’

  ‘I suppose I could try asking her, she’s heading this way.’

  McCray muttered: ‘Rather you than me,’ before making himself scarce.

  Tanya sat on the banquette next to him. ‘Julie lost interest?’

  ‘She’s gone to the bar.’

  ‘What do you think of her dress?’

  ‘Tight, very tight and short, very short…I’ll ask her if she can get one in your size?’

  She smacked him lightly on the thigh. ‘She bought it just for you. Are you going to put her out of her misery?’

  ‘You mean sleep with her? No fear, there’s always the aftermath to consider – the tears, the recriminations and impossibility of getting away from each other in a small team. It would be better for her to find somebody outside work.’

  ‘You’re going to let her down gently.’

  ‘I’m trying to send the right signs, but she’s ignoring the message.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay and protect you?’

  ‘My partner will be picking me up later and if Julie’s still around there could be fireworks.’

  ‘They could have a mud wrestling contest – the best of three falls gets to take you home.’

  ‘And you’d know where to get the mud?’

  ‘Of course, Douglas, I’m a girl of many talents.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, you’re really a promoter and policewoman is just the day job.’

  ‘We could sell tickets, I’m sure they would go down a bomb at the station.’

  ‘Unfortunately for your money making scheme Susanne prefers blood sports.’

  ‘Blood sports?’

  ‘You’re not really into the British culture thing, are you Tanya. Hunting, shooting, fishing are the sports of the aristocrats.’

  ‘She’s an aristocrat?’

  ‘Someone hasn’t been listening to the canteen gossip; her parents are Lord and Lady Glendinning. They have estates over on the east side of Scotland and Northern England covering about ten-thousand acres in total.’

  ‘Do they live in a large house?’ Tanya asked.

  Douglas wondered what Tanya was getting at, but he suppressed the joke answer, that came to mind and gave the straightforward answer: ‘Herreck House, it’s just south of Edinburgh, I lost count after twenty bedrooms the last time I was there.’

  ‘Do you stay there often?’

  ‘Susanne tries to stay away from there as much as possible.’

  ‘Ah, do I interpret a family rift?’

  Douglas was about to reply when he spotted Julie heading back towards the table bearing glasses and still wearing the gold dress. She put what looked like a treble whisky in front of Douglas and sat down beside him while glaring at Tanya – clearly she wasn’t happy.

  Douglas leaned closer to Julie. ‘Tanya wants to know where you got the dress?’

  ‘On eBay, but they don’t do ones in her size,’ Julie snapped back.

  *****

  As Tanya headed away in to the crowd Douglas remembered where he’d seen a tall woman dressed similarly in jeans and brown leather jacket and a head taller than the rest of the women in the place. He wondered if her presence at the Pink Pelican Niteclub was business or pleasure. His thoughts were interrupted by the approach of what he classed as an older man, although his age was difficult to pin down within a decade.

  ‘Douglas Ashburner?’ the man asked.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Douglas said looking, closely at the face with its sharp nose, sharp chin and piercing eyes, framed by a straggle of greying hair.

  ‘Thought you might want a drink after your narrow escape on Monday night.’

  Douglas paused to check before replying in case the alcohol led him to say something inopportune. ‘My job tells me to beware strange men offering gifts.’

  ‘Well, it’s no that strange, I’m Johnny Buxton of the Glasgow Evening Advertiser.’

  ‘That name rings a bell.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be much of a detective if it didn’t.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to put the mockers on our discussion but we’ve been warned not to speak to the rats of the press; we must leave that sort of thing to our elders and betters.’

  ‘Do I detect a university accent?’

  ‘Is there such a thing, Mr Buxton?’

  ‘I suppose not in the strict sense of anything, but it’s the sum of the clothes, accent, word usage, sentence length, vocabulary, dialect, first names and surname and it all goes into that first impression. The lassie you were talking to, now that’s a bird of an entirely different feather.’

  ‘The one in the gold dress?’

  ‘Aye, that’s the one, now she went to school with Shona Doherty and that puts her in a different league from you – although to be fair you only went to public school for four years before university. What happened, did the money run out?’

  ‘You’ve been doing some research, Mr Buxton, I wonder why?’

  ‘Call me Johnny; it all comes down to research, who’s going up and who’s going down either side of the law. Now take little Shona, she’s on the way up, she runs a large chunk of the Doherty’s more legit business empire. And she was severely put out to find that an employee, one Gordon McKenzie, has been putting the boot into her favourite policeman, one Douglas Ashburner.’

  ‘Which part of Doherty’s empire does she
run?’

  ‘Ah, here we go, straight in with the questions. She’s not the bimbo she appears to be, she runs the set of four Pelican nightclubs, the Blue, the Pink, the Black and the Red.’

  ‘I’ve seen the inside of the Pink and the Blue, but what are the Black and the Red?’

  ‘The Black doesn’t advertise itself much, it’s an S&M club, with a widespread clientele – you would be surprised at some of the people that go there. The Red doesn’t advertise at all, it’s for the most exclusive clientele – the lower orders don’t even get a look in.’

  ‘The Red one doesn’t get a mention in the reports, why is that?’ Douglas asked.

  ‘Well, you would have to ask yourself why. Anyhow, they started with the one nightclub after Jimmy Doherty, Shona’s father, died. They were flush with money back then and they built up the business over the years adding pubs and opening more clubs. Gradually the illegal parts of the business faded away and they became more legitimate.’

  ‘So it turns on Jimmy Doherty’s death?’

  ‘Yep, do you know the story of how he died?’

  Douglas waited for his brain, slowed by the alcohol, to function before he remembered the story. ‘He was shot by a police firearms unit outside a bank during a robbery because he was holding a gun and now you’re going to tell me it was all a conspiracy.’

  ‘Something like that, the trust fund set up in Shona’s name had five-hundred-thousand in it to start with and now has in excess of three million in property, shares and cash. And the question is: why give that amount to a failed bank robber?’

  ‘There was doubt about the circumstances of the shooting?’

  ‘Huh, that’s the official version – it was a set-up. He was acting under orders from the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, who ran the war against the Provos back then. The guns used in the robbery weren’t going to fire anything lethal, the ammunition had been doctored; basically MI6 wanted a clean arrest for the other three members of the gang, who were part of a republican cell. They were clean skins from the UK; in fact so clean they couldn’t get any evidence on them that would stand up in court. Enter James Doherty with dodgy guns and plans to rob a bank. Only, wires were crossed, and as soon as they left the bank Doherty was shot dead by a team brought in especially for occasion. The case took a very long time to come to court and a verdict of lawful killing was returned very quickly, but despite the verdict, a trust fund was set up for the widow and her child and it was handed a considerable sum of money, basically to keep mouths shut about the whole botched job. But, then again, was it really crossed wires or was James Doherty the victim of an interdepartmental feud?’