The Pretender's Gold

by Scott Mariani

‘How quickly can you get hold of these contacts?’

  ‘I can think of four men based in London who can make themselves available to us at a couple of days’ notice.’

  ‘No quicker than that?’

  ‘These are busy people,’ Hacker said. ‘And they’re expensive.’

  ‘Of course. Are these men part of your … organisation?’

  ‘It’s more of a brotherhood,’ Hacker said. ‘A fraternity of men with a shared background and set of values. There’s a whole network of us, but the four I have in mind are Bobby Banks, Kev O’Donnell, Liam Carter and Mitch Graham.’

  ‘Call them. I can have the jet pick them up as soon as they’re ready to travel.’

  ‘They’ll want to know exactly what the job entails. Therefore I need to know what your intentions are. Once we find McCulloch, what then?’

  ‘I would say that’s self-evident. He needs to be taken out of the game. And I don’t mean paid off to keep his mouth shut. I mean eliminated, properly and permanently, like the other two.’

  ‘But preferably with a little more expertise and neatness,’ Hacker said. ‘The Campbell business was clumsy, at best. To say nothing of the complete dog’s breakfast they made of “eliminating” McCulloch’s nephew.’

  ‘I accept that some mistakes have been made,’ his employer said, a little stiffly. ‘It can’t happen again.’

  Hacker nodded again. ‘And if I’m in charge of this operation now, we do things my way. Agreed?’

  They shook hands. Hacker left the room and got straight on the phone to the kinds of people he knew he could trust to come on board.

  McCulloch had no idea what he’d got himself into. The fool was already as good as dead.

  Chapter 25

  The morning after her meeting with Ben Hope, Grace Kirk was at her desk in the police station in Fort William, staring at a pile of administrative work in front of her without really seeing it. She was having trouble devoting her undivided attention to a recent spate of farm machinery thefts in the area, and kept drifting off to think about more pressing matters.

  Before her day’s shift had begun she’d detoured by the hospital to check on Ewan and been allowed in to see him, just for a few moments, by the careworn Dr Fraser, who was obviously concerned that his coma was persisting without sign of recovery. Grace had sat by Ewan’s bedside and clasped his hand while speaking to him softly. ‘Ewan, it’s me. It’s Grace. Won’t you please come back to us?’ It was so awful to see him lying there, hooked up to machines and covered in tubes and wires. He looked shrivelled and lifeless and it was impossible to know what, if anything, was happening inside his mind. She had left the hospital in tears.

  Also distracting her from her work was the memory of her encounter with the intriguing stranger she’d met last night, and the perplexing things he’d told her. She couldn’t get them out of her head. She’d lain awake half the night, puzzling.

  Nor could she forget the sound of his voice or the intensity of his eyes as he’d talked. It had been as though nothing and nobody else in the world existed at that moment. Just her, him and the crackling fire that flickered in his pupils. There was something about this guy Hope. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was something else entirely. She liked him. In fact, if she was honest with herself, maybe she liked him a little too damn much.

  When she finally got sick of writing reports about stolen tractor parts, she switched into another part of the police computer system and made a couple of calls to check on what was happening with Angus Baird and his two brawler friends. She was gratified to learn that all three of them were scheduled to appear before the Sheriff Court in three days’ time, accused of breaching the peace. Baird was still in hospital with concussion, which came as no surprise to Grace. The other two were being bound over in jail until their court date, because of their previous convictions for violence. Silly bastards.

  The office space that Grace shared with her fellow officers was a cramped cubicle that smelled of laundered police uniforms, the aftershave of the mostly male coppers, and the bad coffee from the machine down the hallway. The peculiar brown liquid it dispensed was generally referred to as ‘the shits’, but they all nevertheless consumed it in endless quantities. She was thinking of going to fetch a cup when one of her colleagues, a somewhat hyperactive young constable called Pete Finnigan, came by with one of the ready smiles he always had for her, and some surprising news.

  ‘Hey, Cap’n.’ He thought it was amusing to call her that, because of her surname. Spot the Star Trek geek.

  Grace wasn’t really in the mood for a chat, but she offered back a friendly smile. ‘Hi, Pete.’

  ‘Heard the latest? They made an arrest in the McCulloch case.’

  Grace’s smile dropped and she stared at him. ‘Seriously? Who?’

  ‘Watkins.’

  ‘The Greenie?’ Grace knew about Geoff Watkins from all the fuss in recent months over the Highland Manor project. He and some of his fellow ecowarriors had set up a tipi camp near the main gates of the development site and resolutely vowed to remain dug in there for as long as it took to force the contractors to pull out once and for all. Watkins had specifically come to the attention of the local police due to the extensive criminal record he’d accrued pursuing his ideological crusade back in his native England, which included everything from scuffles with officers during rowdy climate protests to attempted arson attacks on butcher’s shops. It seemed that some people just had nothing better to do. He’d spent a couple of months in jail in 2016, following a particularly nasty hunt saboteur incident in which a horse had been badly injured and its rider nearly killed. Since his arrival on the local scene, Watkins had been suspected of taking part in the vandalism of construction equipment at the Highland Manor site but there’d been insufficient evidence to charge him with criminal damage.

  ‘I shit you not,’ Finnigan said with a smirk, pleased by the look of amazement on her face. ‘Brought him in early this morning, after our officers hit the camp in a dawn raid led by none other than the heroic DI Macleod himself, with his wee lapdog Coull scurrying at his heels.’ Finnigan should have been a small-town reporter instead of a police constable. He glanced around in case any of the office tattle-tales were listening.

  Grace said, ‘I’d no idea that Watkins was a suspect in the investigation.’

  ‘Kind of a no-brainer, really. It was common knowledge that McCulloch & Campbell were the surveyors for the Highland Manor project. Makes perfect sense for a nutcase like him to target the firm director for intimidation. With his form, you wonder why Macleod and Coull didn’t jump on him sooner.’

  ‘Is motive all they’ve got on him? Is there any direct evidence?’

  Finnigan shrugged. ‘Just telling you what I know, Cap’n. Not like we shit-kicking bottom feeders in the lower ranks have the inside track on what the brass are up to, is it?’

  Grace was frowning. ‘What about Ross Campbell?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘If the Greenies had motive for assaulting one member of the McCulloch & Campbell firm, then that works for both.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose so, but as far as I know, the thing with Ross Campbell is still down as an accidental drowning.’

  ‘Seems like a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  Finnigan shrugged again. ‘Hey, shit happens.’ Then his smirk grew wider and he lowered his voice. ‘But listen. Never mind all that. I’ve got to tell you what Cammie Linton told me just now. He was on the raid. Made me so fuckin’ wish I’d been there too, man.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Och, you wouldn’t believe it. So when the troops landed on the camp, right, there’s Watkins and about a dozen of his hippy friends all huddled under blankets around this brazier to stay warm, right? Then Watkins sees the officers running towards him, and he jumps up from under the blanket and he’s stark fuckin’ bollock naked.’

  ‘Oh, come off it. No way.’

  Finnigan’s grin was spread so far across his
face that it looked as if it was going to split. ‘You heard me. It’s, like, minus two degrees and this bawheid’s in his birthday suit. Maybe they use some kind of wacko Zen meditation to control their body temperature while they’re communing with the Being. Anyhow, then Watkins takes off and starts legging it like a bat out of hell through the snow with Coull and six more officers chasing after him. But then it gets even better, because Watkins’ hippy friends – they’re all totally in the scud too – they start yelling and screaming at the top of their voices and pelting our guys with turds. Fuckin’ turds, man. Like they were keeping them handy to use as ammunition or something.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘You couldn’t make this up. Anyhow, they ended up making five more arrests. Grace? You okay?’

  Grace’s mind had drifted off while he was talking. Naked hippies flinging excrement didn’t interest her too much, and in any case PC Cammie Linton was notorious around the station for spinning all manner of weird and wonderful yarns that only a dork like Pete Finnigan would fall for. Instead she was thinking that if Watkins was responsible for the attack on Ewan McCulloch, then whether or not the Campbell drowning was connected it went against everything Ben Hope had told her about the gold coins, and about his fears for what might have happened to his friend Boonzie. If the ecowarrior was indeed the culprit, Hope was on a wild goose chase and the apparent disappearance of Ewan’s uncle was still unaccounted for. Unless Ben Hope was getting that all wrong, too.

  Then again, Ben Hope didn’t strike Grace as a guy who got things all wrong.

  Finnigan looked a little peeved that she wasn’t cracking up at his account of the dawn raid. ‘What’s the matter with you? That’s the best fuckin’ story I’ve heard in yonks. Almost shat myself laughing when Cammie told me.’

  She asked, ‘So has he put his hands up to it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Watkins. Has he confessed to the assault?’

  ‘Cammie said that when they took’m away he wiz screamin’ that he was innocent, had nothin’ to do with it and they got the wrong guy, and that this was a government conspiracy to persecute him for his beliefs. But then they all say that, don’t they?’

  Which told Grace that Macleod and Coull were probably still down there in the austere, windowless interview room, working on grinding a confession out of Geoffrey Watkins. ‘To be continued, I suppose. Thanks for filling me in, Pete. Appreciate it.’

  ‘Hey, no problemo. You want a cup of the shits? I was just on my way.’

  ‘No, I’m good.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Cap’n. Gotta rush. See ya.’ Finnigan sauntered off, whistling a cheery tune.

  When Finnigan was gone Grace went back to her pile of work, but any faint hope of being able to get any of it done was now dashed. She leaned back from the desk and gazed out of the window at the grey skies over Fort William and the snow-capped hills in the distance and tried to get her thoughts in order.

  Whichever way she tried to look at it, the Watkins arrest just didn’t make sense to her. The logic worked, as far as it went: Watkins’ history of ideologically inspired thuggery loosely explained the motive for the attack, and certainly nobody could say the guy didn’t have a violent streak. But the more Grace thought about it, the more she doubted that Macleod and Coull had anything solid to pin on Watkins. There were just too many boxes left unticked to convince her.

  Casting her mind back to the meeting between Macleod, Coull and Boonzie McCulloch, she remembered how quick her superior officers had been to dismiss the notion that the assault on Ewan and his business partner’s drowning were somehow connected, implying that Ewan’s suspicions about Ross’s death, and the involvement of the poacher, were no more than a tall tale. As though they were trying to give Boonzie the brush-off by discrediting that whole line of enquiry. Yet just moments later they’d been expressing a particular interest in the gold coins that Ross Campbell had somehow come by, and asking Boonzie what he knew about where Ross might have found them. The mention of the coins had caught Grace’s ear at the time, though it hadn’t meant anything to her – nor to Boonzie, as she’d later confirmed with him. Macleod and Coull had tried to act all casual, but their questions had been none too subtle and Grace had thought she detected an underlying sense of anxiety in their tone and manner. The real bullshit note had sounded when Boonzie had challenged Macleod and Coull about it, and they’d shut him down by saying the matter was related to a separate investigation.

  Really? What investigation? The weirdness of her superiors’ line of questioning had struck Grace sharply at the time, and been on her mind ever since. After the things Ben Hope had told her last night, she’d been thinking about it even more. It was as though Macleod and Coull were playing a double game, hiding something while fishing for information and secretly anxious to find out who else might know. Now the Watkins thing had entered the equation, it just didn’t fit right and felt a little too convenient for Grace’s liking. If Ewan was beaten up because of his involvement in the Highland Manor development, where did that leave Ross’s stash of valuable gold coins that Macleod and Coull had been so keen to know more about?

  She was at a loss to piece the facts together, but she sensed that something odd was going on. Even if Macleod and Coull succeeded in extracting a confession out of Watkins, she knew she’d never feel comfortable with that outcome. Because this was about Ewan. Though their relationship was far in the past, she still cared about him deeply as a dear friend. Thanks to all this, he was lingering in a coma from which he might never awaken.

  She couldn’t bear that thought.

  She needed to know the truth.

  The only problem was how to set about finding out. Even under normal circumstances a lowly PC couldn’t go poking her nose into her superior officers’ investigation without getting stonewalled, at best, and more likely treated to a severe bollocking. In any case if her hunch was right and Macleod and Coull had some kind of hidden agenda, the last thing she needed was to draw their suspicion on herself.

  But then Grace had an idea, and thought that maybe there was something else she could do.

  Chapter 26

  Three days earlier

  Following his encounter with Jamie McGlashan, Boonzie had worked his way back through the woods to where he’d hidden the camper van. He had stripped off the ghillie suit and warmed his chilled body by the flame of his gas stove.

  He’d already known then what he had to do next. Nothing else mattered. His mission commitment was unwavering and his plan was sharp and focused in his mind. Yet the white-hot rage he’d felt on hearing the poacher’s testimony had not left him. A terrible burning pain had spread through his chest and down his left side, and racked him until he had eventually given up trying to fight it through willpower alone, and swallowed down two of the pills from his bottle. He hated himself for his weakness. When at last the agony had diminished, he had been able to curl up under his blanket and snatch a few hours’ sleep.

  Long before daybreak the following morning, Boonzie set off for Fort William. For the first few miles a fresh snowfall overnight had all but swallowed the lonely road under a virgin carpet of white and he drove carefully until he reached the A82. The council gritter trucks had been out last night to salt the roads, and the tarmac was a clear, twisty black ribbon cutting through the wintry landscape.

  Reaching Fort William just after eight a.m. he passed the hospital where Ewan was, and seriously considered stopping off there to check on him. But he had other matters to attend to first. From the hospital he followed the route by which Grace Kirk had driven him to the police station. It was still dark when he got there, but traffic was already filtering through the building’s main gate as the early birds reported for work, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

  In a more urban environment Boonzie would have chosen to find a parking position on the street somewhere opposite the building, from which to mount surveillance on his target. The Fort William police headquarters sat alone in the middle of a large ar
ea of wasteland, off the town bypass close to a roundabout, and there was nowhere to set up his observation point outside the grounds. Instead he drove straight inside and parked in a side parking area for visitors, within view of the building’s entrance.

  If anyone came over and asked him what he was doing there, he’d say he’d come to talk to DI Macleod or DS Coull about his nephew’s assault. Which was essentially the truth, anyway. Although what Boonzie had in mind went beyond mere talking.

  The camper van was a fine surveillance vehicle. It had a side window veiled with a lace curtain, and below it a berth that folded up into a bed-settee when not in use. Boonzie detached the scope from the crossbow and settled on the sofa cushions so that he could watch from behind the lace as staff cars arrived and their occupants entered the building some sixty yards away. With the scope’s magnification screwed up to the max, he could easily make out their faces from this distance.

  Within a minute of his arrival a silver Ford sedan turned in through the gates and parked in the staff parking area, followed by a small blue Kia. He watched as their drivers, a man in his thirties and a woman with bleached-blond hair respectively, got out and pushed inside the building’s front doors with his scope crosshairs centred on their faces. Neither of them was of interest to him. He went on waiting.

  Boonzie had Jamie McGlashan’s mobile phone in his pocket. He had taken it from the poacher in case it came in handy, preferring the anonymity of using someone else’s rather than having to purchase one in his own name. He could feel it there, burning a hole in his side, telling him he should use it to phone home. He took the phone out and gazed at it, torn by indecision. Part of him badly wanted to talk to Mirella, to check on how she was doing and to tell her he was okay. But he knew she’d be very emotional, and feared that the sound of her voice and her tears might break his resolve and make him want to give up his quest and rush back home to be with her again.

  Instead he used the phone to look up the number for Belford Hospital online, dialled it and got through to the main reception desk. He identified himself, asked if Dr Fraser was available and was told she’d just come in. While waiting for the doctor to come on the phone, he watched three more cars arrive. A yellow VW, a brown Land Rover Discovery and a purple Suzuki hatchback. Two females, one male, all unfamiliar faces and of no importance to him.