The Accused (PI Charlie Cameron)

by Owen Mullen

  ‘Not if you’re a man.’

  I hadn’t noticed DS Andrew Geddes standing behind me, singing his usual song. Andrew had been on the wrong end of a bitter divorce and never missed an opportunity to bad-mouth the holy state of matrimony. Listening to him had worn thin. Somebody ought to tell him to put a sock in it, though it wouldn’t be me. My tactic was to ignore it and change the subject. ‘Andrew! Any progress on the promotion?’

  ‘Not so far. Have to produce evidence to prove leadership. Whole load of stuff like that. Just making some notes. Not so easy to write about yourself.’

  ‘Will your detective inspector be involved?’

  ‘Of course, Barr will be asked for his input so I’m not holding my breath.’

  ‘Surely he wouldn’t stand in your way?’

  Andrew looked at me as if I’d come down with yesterday’s rain and put a friendly hand on my shoulder. ‘Sometimes I wonder how you’ve managed to get through life, Charlie. Your innocence is touching. DI Adam Barr wouldn’t give me a kick in the head to bring me out of a fit. I’m everything he’s not, starting with professional. Wouldn’t stand in my way? Yeah, right. After what happened with Tony Daly, he’d have me on traffic duty.’

  ‘But you were right about the councillor case.’

  ‘And he was wrong. Not likely to forget it, is he? Can only hope he moves on sooner rather than later because, until he does, I’ll be staying a detective sergeant.’

  Pat Logue said, ‘It’s a hard world,’ and cleared his throat. I knew what was coming. Hoped I was wrong. I wasn’t wrong. He said, ‘“If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” Rudyard Kipling.’

  Geddes glared at him.

  Alex Gilby coming through the door broke the tension. Alex was around sixty and had been on the Glasgow hospitality scene longer than almost anyone, in his time, operating some of the best-known restaurants and café bars in the city. The clothes he wore were expensive, yet he always looked as if he’d dressed in the dark. Today, it was jeans, a jacket and a white open-necked shirt. He grinned at us and put an avuncular hand on the shoulder of the blonde with him.

  ‘This is my niece, Michelle. She’s coming to work here.’

  Michelle smiled at everyone and no one. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties: bright-eyed and eager. Alex explained her to us. ‘Michelle isn’t sure what she wants to do with her life. My sister suggested I give her a start in hospitality. See how she takes to it.’

  He was the boss. He could do what he liked. At least, that was the theory. His next statement set off alarm bells in my head. ‘Jackie’s going to show her the ropes.’

  I wondered if he’d talked to Jackie. For his sake, I hoped so, otherwise – boss or no boss – a shitload of trouble was about to fall on his head.

  ‘Is she in her office? I’ll go and speak to her.’

  With Alex gone, Pat Logue straightened his shoulders and stepped forward, ready to go into his Mr Charm routine. Patrick had a thing for barmaids. Considering how much of his life he spent in their company, it was hardly a surprise. What he was building up to – to borrow one of his many sporting phrases – was called ‘playing away from home’.

  Andrew Geddes stared righteously at the floor. Pat moved beside Michelle and whispered something we couldn’t hear; she laughed. Geddes shot a disapproving glance at me and shook his head. ‘How in God’s name do you put up with him, Charlie? Man’s no better than a rutting animal.’

  ‘No, he’s just a middle-aged guy trying to prove he’s still got it.’

  ‘Wish I had your tolerance.’

  ‘So do I, Andrew.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jackie marching towards the bar with a red-faced Alex trailing behind her. She put out her hand to the new-start. ‘Jackie. I hear you’re joining us. Welcome to NYB.’

  To anyone who didn’t know better, it sounded genuine. I knew better. Jackie Mallon made the decisions in New York Blue, especially the hiring and firing. Having the owner give somebody a job – a relative, of all people – without squaring it with her first wasn’t on. Jackie guarded her territory like a lioness protecting her young, the reason my office was in Cochrane Street now and not upstairs. Any threat would be met and matched, even if it came from the owner. Through no fault of her own, Gilby’s niece was in for a difficult time. Michelle was too unworldly to realise that, thanks to her uncle, she’d unwittingly become part of a power struggle. I didn’t envy her.

  Gilby hovered in the background, smiling like an idiot, willing things to go well. Pity he hadn’t thought about it earlier. An old hand had made an amateur’s mistake and was already regretting it.

  Jackie’s smile was frozen in place. ‘So, when can you start?’

  ‘When would you like me to start?’

  She led Michelle behind the bar. ‘What’s wrong with right now? Let’s see you pour a pint.’

  ‘A pint of what?’

  ‘Something easy. Make it a pint of Guinness.’

  9

  Kim Rafferty wouldn’t be expecting to hear from me so soon after our meeting. When she saw who was calling, she’d assume I’d had a brainwave and was on with great news for her and her daughter. Letting her down didn’t sit well. Neither did drinking my food through a straw. Sean and I had crossed swords twice before and I’d come out still breathing. I didn’t fancy my chances a third time.

  Expectation was alive in her voice from the first words. ‘Mr Cameron?’

  ‘Yeah, Kim, it’s me. Look, there’s no easy way to say this so I’ll come right out with it. If I thought I could help you, believe me, I wouldn’t hesitate. I can’t. It just isn’t possible.’

  Her tone was flat; she sounded numb. ‘You promised you’d think about it.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘You said to give you a few days.’

  ‘A few days won’t change things. You told me yourself there’s nowhere your husband won’t find you. My opinion hasn’t changed.’

  ‘You mean go to the police.’

  ‘I mean go to the police. They’ll protect you.’

  Her next words would stay with me for the rest of my life.

  ‘You’re afraid of him, aren’t you? You’re afraid of Sean.’

  I wanted to deny it. Wanted it not to be true; the heat in my face said it was.

  ‘Most fathers would hurt anybody who took their child away. Rosie’s father, your husband, is Sean Rafferty. I’d be insane not to be.’

  The call was over, yet we both stayed on the line. I heard her sobbing at the other end and wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. Finally, Kim Rafferty pulled herself together. She whispered, ‘Goodbye, Mr Cameron,’ and hung up.

  The rest of the day was a bust after that. I watched the shadows lengthen in the room around me and listened to the constant hum of traffic on Cochrane Street heading into George Square. Outside, people were finishing work and going home.

  I’d do the same.

  Eventually.

  Kim threw herself on the bed, feeling more alone than at any point in her life. The private investigator had been, at best, a long shot. No one in their right mind would mess with Sean, not if they wanted to keep breathing. Except, Charlie Cameron had. More than once. Knowing that had given her hope he’d do it again.

  There was a moment in his office when she’d felt he was close to ignoring the risk of going up against her husband. His ‘Let me think about it’ told Kim her story had touched him. But it wasn’t enough – the phone call shouldn’t have been a surprise. There was a line only a fool would cross. Cameron wasn’t a fool and helping a gangster’s wife run away was over it. Well over it.

  Her husband hated Charlie Cameron. With good reason; he’d been a thorn in his side from the beginning. Killing him wouldn’t cost a man like Sean a second thought, yet so far, he hadn’t. The PI’s connections in the police meant his death or disappearance would attract more attention than the thug she’d married could handle.

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nbsp; The framed publicity photograph on the bedside cabinet mocked her. On the surface, they were the couple with everything – him a prominent and successful figure in business circles, her a former beauty queen turned model – smiling for the cameras at the end of an evening as they got into the car taking them to the luxurious home on the outskirts of the city, where the gorgeous child they’d created together was waiting for her mummy and daddy.

  Only, it was a lie. The marriage was a sham. For Kim, just being in the same room as him was unbearable. He’d never hid his many affairs, slipping into bed beside her with the smell of his latest whore still on him.

  Kim was losing weight, her nerves were shot; yesterday, she’d noticed her hair was falling out. Even without the insane jealousy and the violence, she couldn’t take any more. Physically she was coming apart. Mentally and emotionally, she was already there. Sean had no use for her. Any day now, he’d have her declared an unfit mother. She’d lose Rosie. If that happened…

  Buying the house in Bothwell overlooking the river had been a landmark for Sean Rafferty – three and a half million, complete with Jacuzzi, sauna and billiard room. He didn’t play billiards and was yet to climb into the Jacuzzi. Not the point. Not the point, at all. It was only fifteen miles from the East End streets he’d played in as a boy, while his father built his illegal empire on broken bones and worse, but it was a tangible sign Sean had travelled worlds away from his upbringing. Like him, his neighbours – if you could call them neighbours, they were so far away – had done all right for themselves and didn’t care who knew it. For most, this was as high as they were destined to fly. And that was the difference. There was more and Sean wanted it. When the time was right, he’d have it. Tomorrow, the man who’d help him get it was arriving at Glasgow Airport. Emil Rocha was central to Rafferty’s plans. Sean would be there to meet him when he landed because the Spaniard held the keys to the kingdom. Impressing him was important.

  In the kitchen, Rosie moved around in her baby-walker oblivious to the tense atmosphere between her parents. Kim was unloading the dishwasher – still giving him the silent treatment. Rafferty studied the outline of her underwear through the beige slacks. She sensed his eyes on her, stopped what she was doing and faced him, her expression hostile.

  He saw her eyes red-rimmed from crying and mistook their cause. ‘Isn’t it about time you put the other night behind you and started acting like Sean Rafferty’s wife? If you don’t want the job there’s plenty who do.’

  ‘They’re welcome to it.’

  Rafferty drew a hand over the Aga, inspecting it for dust that wasn’t there.

  ‘All in good time, my darling. All in good time. Tomorrow night, I need you to be at your brilliant best.’

  ‘I don’t feel like going anywhere, Sean.’ Her hand touched her cheek. ‘Not like this.’

  Rafferty breathed an exaggerated sigh. ‘Maybe I’m not making myself clear. It isn’t a suggestion. What you “feel like” doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘Where’re we going?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll be taking our award-winning impersonation of a happy couple on the road – the successful husband and his gorgeous wife. The one the newspapers are so fond of.’ He took her chin in his fingers; she shuddered at his touch. ‘Smiling isn’t optional. Emil has an eye for the ladies. Quite a stud in his younger days, I understand. I expect you to have him eating out of your hand. Can you do that small thing for me? You used to be able to. Showing your tits was your party piece, as I remember.’

  Rafferty dropped the games. ‘Be on your best behaviour. Don’t fuck this up. I’m serious, Kim. Cause a scene, you’ll get the same again. And it’ll take more than a bit of make-up to cover it up. As soon as Rocha’s on the plane heading back to his villa, you can hate me as much as you like.’

  He lifted Rosie into his arms and kissed her forehead. ‘Now, what’s for dinner?’

  10

  Sunlight flashed on the wing of the Gulfstream G650 making its descent out of a blue sky into Glasgow Airport with its three passengers on board – Emil Rocha and two bodyguards. Sean Rafferty shielded his eyes. He’d visited Rocha’s villa in the hills above the Mediterranean and recalled the heavy security around it. He’d drunk iced tea in the shade of an orange tree the Spaniard had planted himself, listening to him talk about his family: orange farmers, who’d worked hard and died poor. The tree was a symbol, he’d said – a reminder of where he’d come from and how different it might have been.

  Clearing Passport Control was a formality. For all his notoriety, the drug lord had no criminal record and was able to travel freely, although who he was and what he did was well known. Sean Rafferty envied him.

  They’d met just once but spoken on the phone dozens of times. It was Rocha’s millions behind the waterside development. The Scottish gangster didn’t have that kind of money. Not yet.

  The visitor threw his arms around him, as though he was welcoming a long-lost son back into the fold, grinning his pleasure. His English was flawless, spoken with barely a trace of accent. ‘It’s been so long. Too long. I can’t believe it.’

  Rafferty examined the lean bronzed face, the white hair and dark eyes. Emil Rocha didn’t seem to have aged. At close to sixty, he was still a handsome man, who’d never married and bedded more females than he could remember.

  ‘Good to see you, Emil, you’re looking well.’

  The Spaniard put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, ‘Unfortunately, Sean, I’ve been given some bad news.’

  ‘Surely not?’

  ‘Yes, the doctors tell me I’ve only fifty years left to live.’ He roared at his own joke. ‘How can I accomplish anything in such a short time? Seriously, I am well. How are you? How is your lovely wife?’

  Rafferty was expecting the enquiry and had his answer ready. ‘She’s fine. Nervous about finally meeting the great Emil.’

  ‘She has no need to be nervous. Women are God’s gift to us and we must cherish them. When will I see her?’

  ‘Tonight, at the restaurant. I’ll drop you at your hotel and hook up later. Let me take your bag.’

  Mistrust clouded the Spaniard’s eyes. ‘No, thank you, my friend. This bag is my mistress. It sleeps with me and never leaves my side. But, unlike a mistress, it never tells me lies.’ He laughed again. ‘We have a lot to discuss, you and me, eh?’

  Rafferty led the way through the concourse and made for the car park.

  ‘We have, indeed, Emil.’

  Dennis Boyd’s instructions had been intentionally vague, and as I left the city in the early afternoon and headed east on the M74 I wondered what it must be like to be the prime suspect in a violent murder on your first day of freedom after a decade and a half. To find yourself back where you started with whatever plans you’d had in the gutter and the police after you would be more than enough to make anybody careful about who they spoke to and where. Probably why Boyd had wanted a daytime meeting out in the open. If I was bringing the police, he’d see them and melt into the crowd.

  I had no opinion on whether Dennis Boyd was guilty or innocent. In truth, I’d no idea. In the circumstances, why he might choose to meet at Strathclyde Park, twelve miles from the scene of the latest crime, was easy to understand. It was harder to see where I fitted.

  At the Bothwell roundabout, a left turn took me past a Holiday Inn Express and the M&D’s theme park, where three children had been seriously injured in a classic example of wrong time wrong place, when a roller coaster derailed and plunged twenty feet to the ground. Not so with Boyd. Luck, bad or otherwise, had had nothing to do with it. Putting him next to the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor of a West End car park – if his friend Mrs Kennedy was to be believed – was exactly what somebody intended.

  Four men and two women in their seventies jogged Indian file, determination fixed on their sweat-stained faces. I gave them a friendly toot of the horn, parked on a square of grey asphalt facing the man-made loch, and waited.
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br />   Out on the water, a dozen pairs of rowers bent to their task, tracing white lines that glistened in their wake. On a different day, just watching would’ve been a pleasure. Doubt nagged me and already I regretted getting involved.

  Dennis Boyd was the most wanted man in Glasgow. What the hell was I doing?

  This week had started badly and fallen away. The similarity between Kim Rafferty’s situation and where Dennis Boyd found himself was hard to miss – they were both on the losing end.

  I wasn’t aware of him until the door opened and Boyd got in, filling the car with an intimidating presence. Introductions would have been laughable. We didn’t go there. He half turned to face me and I saw a man wearing thick-rimmed glasses who’d been handsome in his youth. His hair was short and grey and his clothes weren’t what I was expecting from someone who, only two days earlier, had been detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. The suit, shirt and tie under an oatmeal herringbone coat – inappropriate for the weather – gave him the look of a successful businessman rather than an ex-convict. Even his shoes were expensive.

  But it was an illusion, not destined to last – Boyd brought out a pouch of tobacco and a packet of Rizla papers from his pocket. Thick fingers deftly rolled and shaped the materials into a thin white cylinder. I’d been quick enough to nip his former lover’s smoking habits in the bud. Dennis Boyd deserved no better, except he was a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders; good manners were well down his list. When he was satisfied, he gently smoothed the ends and struck a match. Through a sulphur cloud hard eyes assessed me with a detachment I found unnerving. But for Mrs Kennedy coming to my office we would never have met and life would’ve been a little bit less complicated.