The Accused (PI Charlie Cameron)

by Owen Mullen

  Patrick said something that made him smile and patted his bony shoulder under the faded denim jacket. When he saw me, he got up, stuffed a ten-pound note in the cup and shook the beggar’s hand. From the light in the guy’s eyes he’d been given more than money.

  DS Geddes disliked Pat Logue for living on the margins and didn’t care who knew it. Jackie Mallon thought he was a good customer and a terrible husband. Personal experience had taught me he could be a manipulative rogue. But there was more to him than any of us were seeing. To Patrick, people were just trying to make sense of their lives in a world where the odds – from the cradle to the grave – were stacked against too many of them. He didn’t judge what they did to get by and would help if he could.

  Tomorrow, maybe later today, he’d be after me for a sub to keep him going, yet here he was giving cash to a stranger. I’d caught him at his best and was reminded why I liked him.

  He got in, fastened his seat belt and gave me directions, the encounter already forgotten. ‘Head for Bellshill.’

  We drove deeper into the East End of the city. Off to our right, Celtic Park was a giant alien spacecraft. Patrick gave me the potted version of his visit to the Schooner Inn.

  ‘McDermid’s givin’ the pub a miss, at least for a while.’

  ‘So, where is he?’

  ‘Barmaid’s in the dark. Literally in that dive. Electricity hasn’t caught on like it has everywhere else. Or somebody didn’t bother putting fifty pence in the meter. But she liked me. Didn’t come right out and say it, mind. No need. Her body language did the talkin’ for her. Thank God for Buckfast shot. McDermid lives in Possil. Zero chance he’s still there. She let slip his son Rory works on the rigs. Isn’t married. Same as his father. Has a house in Bellshill. I’m bettin’ that’s where his old man’s hidin’.’

  Patrick pulled the visor down and admired his goatee in the mirror. ‘Good to know the old magic’s still there.’

  ‘You’ve got an address?’

  He grinned. ‘Not too many Rory McDermids in the phone book. ’Course I’ve got an address.’

  We edged out of the city. Gallowgate became Tollcross Road then London Road. At Carmyle, I joined the M74 and carried on. Patrick stayed quiet, maybe thinking about his imagined success with the barmaid in the Schooner Inn or the boy and his addiction.

  At the turn-off for Bellshill he said, ‘Still surprised the witnesses hung around for Boyd to come out of the poky. Would’ve disappeared like snow off a dyke if it had been me. Surely they didn’t think he was goin’ to let it go?’

  It was a point we’d already discussed; heading for the hills was the logical thing to do. Wilson, McDermid and Davidson must’ve realised they were in danger. Why stick around? Unless they’d done nothing wrong or thought they were protected.

  We left the motorway at Bothwell and stopped at the traffic lights at the bottom of the off-ramp. Strathclyde Park, where I’d met Dennis Boyd, was across the roundabout.

  The lights turned green and I drove up the steep rise to Bellshill. In the town, Patrick asked a woman pushing a go-chair for directions to the address he’d found for Rory McDermid. The child was bawling and she was harassed and embarrassed. She shook her head and walked on. A grey-haired man with a dog on a leash was more helpful; he knew the street and told us how to get there. As we pulled into the housing estate, Pat said, ‘If McDermid’s here, what’s the script?’

  ‘Get him to talk about his part in the trial.’

  He laughed. ‘Break down and tell us who paid him to commit perjury? Don’t see it.’

  ‘Agreed. I think we should push the if-we-can-find-you-so-can-he angle.’

  Even as I spoke, it sounded far-fetched. Patrick damned me with faint praise.

  ‘Say this for you, Charlie, you’re an optimist.’

  No, I wasn’t. I was faking it.

  The house was an ex-council pebble-dashed three-bedroom semi-detached, with a dark-wood garage at the end of the drive; a rusty padlock hung from the hasp. There was no sign of a car, the Venetian blinds were drawn and the slim hope I’d had of finding Liam McDermid hiding in his son’s place evaporated. I knocked on the front door. Nobody answered because nobody was home. I tried again with the same result then peered through the letter box, seeing the empty hall and on into the kitchen. Neither the father nor the son was here; the house was deserted.

  Patrick said, ‘I’ll try the back.’

  Seconds later he called to me and I joined him standing with the padlock in his hand and the wooden door dragged aside. ‘Think we’ve found him, Charlie. And it won’t do Dennis Boyd’s case much good.’

  He was right about that.

  I stepped inside the garage into an invisible cloud of fumes. A black rubber hose ran from the exhaust of a green Astra to the window on the driver’s side. I put my hand over my mouth and opened the door, careful not to leave fingerprints.

  In the front seat, a man sat upright. Liam McDermid’s eyes were closed, both arms strapped to his side, his cheeks cherry-pink, as if he’d recently had a blood transfusion; duct tape covered his body like a mummy from his ankles to his neck and over his mouth, fastening him to the headrest. Moving even a little would’ve been impossible, assuming he’d been conscious enough to try. The end would’ve come quickly – in the confined space somewhere between five and fifteen minutes – though he’d been dead much longer; the Astra’s bonnet was cold to the touch and the petrol gauge showed empty. Suicide it wasn’t.

  From behind me, Pat Logue summed up what both of us were feeling with a question I couldn’t begin to answer. ‘What’ve you got us into, Charlie?’

  We closed the garage and walked back to the car. We didn’t speak until we were back at the Bothwell roundabout when Patrick broke the silence. I heard anxiety in his voice. ‘I’m guessin’ it’s a call to the police. Tell me I’m right?’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘An anonymous call?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘We were never there?’

  ‘Right again.’

  My responses were glib though the implications of our gruesome discovery hung heavy with me; the last time I’d seen Dennis Boyd he was only a few miles away from the scene of the crime. Diane Kennedy’s passionate pleading in my office on her old lover’s behalf seemed sadly off the mark. She’d put her money on the wrong horse. Again. One dead witness had looked bad for Boyd, yet I’d been prepared to believe him. And her. Two put the issue beyond doubt. At his trial, three witnesses had testified. Only Willie Davidson remained alive. Wherever he was, he needed to pack a bag and get out of Dodge before Boyd found him and made a clean sweep of the men who’d spoken against him.

  In the city, I went into a pub on Shettleston Road and made the call. Patrick waited in the car. When we got to High Street he got out and leaned on the half-opened door, needing to speak, reluctant to go. I thought he was going to give me one of his quotes but I was wrong; he was serious and he was trying to help. Except it would take more than a kind word and a tenner.

  ‘Promise me you’ll be sensible and let the CID do their job?’

  Not having an answer for him was becoming a habit. He tried reason. ‘Charlie, listen. This isn’t what we do. Findin’ who killed the jeweller in the dim and distant… that was one thing… This… is somethin’ else. Murder. Double murder. Dangerous waters to be swimmin’ in. Know what I’m talkin’?’

  His eyes bored into me, willing me to see it as he did. And he was right. No doubt about it, he was right. I cut him a break. ‘You can take a step back, Patrick. I’ll understand. No harm done.’

  His fists clenched and unclenched in frustration. ‘Low blow, mate. That’s not what I mean. You know I can’t leave you with it. How could I?’

  In spite of myself I smiled. ‘Then keep looking for Davidson. Speak to you tomorrow.’

  His reaction was close to comic. Except there was nothing funny about it. ‘Fuck, Charlie. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

  20

  In the off
ice I pulled the blinds on the window and sat in the dark, glad to be alone. Alone, that was, apart from the pictures in my head and the tightness in my chest.

  Pat Logue was neither a brave man nor a coward. For as long as I’d known him, he’d been driven by many things; fear wasn’t one of them. With the Joe Franks case, his thinking was difficult to argue against. What we’d found in Bellshill would’ve been more than enough to convince most people. It had certainly convinced him.

  This wasn’t what he’d signed on for.

  There were times when even I realised my dog-with-a-bone mentality was out of step. This was one of those times. ‘Won’t give up can’t let go’ had limits, and a barman who looked healthier dead than alive had taken me to them and beyond. I lifted the phone and dialled Diane Kennedy’s number.

  ‘Diane Kennedy.’

  ‘Diane, Charlie Cameron.’

  Her hesitancy on hearing my name came down the line. She had no idea what I was going to tell her, though instinctively she sussed it wasn’t going to be anything good.

  ‘Is there news?’

  what’ve you got us into, Charlie?

  ‘Not in the sense you mean. I’m quitting the case.’

  She gasped. ‘No! You can’t!’

  ‘I can and I am.’

  ‘What about Dennis?’

  ‘Boyd can look after himself. He’s doing an okay job so far.’

  ‘But without you they’ll put him back inside.’

  ‘They’ll do that anyway. With or without me.’

  She mumbled to somebody in the room and returned to me. ‘Why now? What’s happened?’

  ‘You don’t want the details, trust me on that.’

  ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘Let’s just say it’s better for all concerned that I’m off the case.’

  ‘It isn’t. It isn’t better for Dennis. He’s out there somewhere, on his own, with the police after him. He believes in you. I believe in you. You can’t just quit.’

  Powerful stuff; not powerful enough to make me change my mind. ‘Afraid you’re wrong. I can and I have. I’m done.’

  Her breathing on the other end of the line was like the rustle of the wind, a portent of the coming storm. She was owed more of an explanation than I was able to give her and was unhappy with the suddenness of my decision.

  Her tone was dry, dismissive. I’d gone from hero to zero. ‘So. Just like that you drop him.’

  ‘Not just like that.’

  She laughed that brittle laugh of hers. ‘Poor Dennis. Should’ve taken the money and got well away from Glasgow when he had the chance. Instead, he pinned his hopes on you. What a loser.’

  Did she mean Boyd or me?

  ‘I’ll post Joe’s papers to you.’

  Diane snapped, ‘Please don’t go to any trouble on my account.’

  ‘They belong to you.’

  Her voice rose, angry and accusing. ‘Well, I don’t fucking want them. What good are they? I’m the one who’s going to have to tell Dennis he’s been abandoned. Not you.’

  I’d given her the best advice I had: sooner or later Boyd would be caught; better if he gave himself up. At the time, a reasonable shout so far as it went. But that was then. In Bellshill, Liam McDermid’s body was on its way to the morgue. The search for his killer would be a manhunt with Boyd at its centre. Capture had always been the most probable outcome for Diane Kennedy’s old lover. Now, it was inevitable.

  The police would let her know the latest development in due course and maybe she’d understand, though I doubted it. As the bringer of bad tidings, I was all she had to unload on. In the circumstances, she held it together pretty well, until her husband said something in the background that made her scream at him.

  When she returned to me, she was curt; there was a tremble in her voice. ‘Forget the papers. Send me your bill.’

  Then she was gone, leaving me staring at the phone in my hand, wondering why the hell I’d got involved in the first place. Diane’s loyalty was admirable but her blind faith in Boyd could be setting her up for a big let-down. His innocence or guilt in Joe Franks’ death fifteen years ago was less important than it had been; events since his release from Barlinnie had overtaken it.

  I needed air. George Square had plenty. A grey-haired woman wearing a scarf and a tan raincoat sat on a bench near the cenotaph feeding broken biscuits to the pigeons from a brown paper bag, her shoes buried beneath the birds flocking around her feet, dipping and diving for the crumbs, always looking for more. When the bag was empty, she crushed it in her hands and held it in the air, smiling. ‘All finished.’

  She brushed crumbs off her coat and walked towards Queen Street and the trains, her job done.

  The absolute ordinariness of it and the lady’s quiet pleasure were timely reminders that normal still existed. Most of what I did was undramatic. Sad sometimes, though no more than you’d expect from life: a daughter or a son falling out with their parents and running to a world they were unprepared for; a wife or a husband quitting the marital home, leaving a bewildered spouse behind; a business partner emptying the company bank account and taking off. In short, the usual. The Joe Franks case had never been that, but with two murders its novelty value paled; any association with it was unwise.

  I stayed in the square for over an hour, people watching, until the sun disappeared and the clouds darkened, returning the sky to its grey default position in these parts. Lightning flashed followed by a distant growl of thunder. The pigeons rose as one, circled and flew to their rooftop nests and safety. I headed for NYB with rain spattering the pavement. By the time I got there it was coming down hard.

  This late in the afternoon, New York Blue was deserted apart from Patrick leaning on the bar deep in conversation with Alex Gilby’s niece, animated and smiling; on the surface at least, recovered from our grim discovery. Saying hello didn’t feel right. I ignored him, ordered a coffee to go and took a seat beside the Rock-Ola. He got the message and refocused his attention on the girl.

  Back in the office I hung my jacket over the cast iron radiator. Thunder crashed over the city chambers, loud enough to make the window rattle in its wooden frame. The latte was cool and unpleasantly strong. Michelle had a lot to learn. Pat Logue was offering to teach her.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs, then the door opened. The glasses Diane had given him had been ditched, his coat was soaked, his hair plastered to his head. Rivulets of water ran down his face; he blinked them away. The last time we’d met, Dennis Boyd looked like a typical businessman. Words were unnecessary. Flinty eyes narrowed as rain dripped off him onto the floor. My decision to quit the case had obviously reached him and, wherever he’d been, he hadn’t wasted time in getting here.

  His opening sentence left me in no doubt how he felt about it.

  ‘Charlie. I’m disappointed in you. I thought we had a deal.’

  21

  Thunder crashed across the black sky above the car gliding through the steel gates and up the drive to the house. Three men got out, oblivious to the rain, scanning the exclusive neighbourhood for prying eyes. There were none. Like everywhere, the people in this part of South Lanarkshire had their own secrets and kept themselves to themselves.

  Sean Rafferty stood aside to let them pass, pointing to the stairs. ‘Left at the top. Do what you have to but don’t mark her face.’ He raised a threatening finger. ‘And don’t wake my daughter.’

  In the kitchen, he switched on the Oracle espresso machine Kim insisted they had to have and tipped Blue Mountain beans into the bowl of the grinder. The noise wasn’t enough to blot out the screams above him. Sean Rafferty cursed – the idiots were going to disturb Rosie. Rocha would be at his villa, probably sipping a glass of chilled white wine, wondering how Sean would handle the situation back in Scotland; he needn’t be concerned. It was taken care of.

  Sean’s laugh was forced; Rocha really was a pompous arsehole and Kim was about to discover there were worse things than dying.

  She was
sitting at the dressing table in her underwear, removing make-up with cotton pads, massaging lotion into her skin, carefully applying it to the swollen area around her eye. Rocha hadn’t called – the sooner he did, the better she’d feel. The sex with him had been the most intense she’d ever known. He’d dominated her from beginning to end, though made it clear he’d no interest in a permanent arrangement. Fine with her. Once they were safe, she’d decide what to do with the rest of her life. Hers and Rosie’s. First things first. Getting Rosie away from her father was the priority. They’d start again somewhere else with new names; the world didn’t need another Rafferty. The prospect excited her and she smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

  Usually, Rosie went down without a fuss. Tonight, she’d been restless, eventually drifting into a fitful sleep, almost as though she’d sensed something wasn’t right. Sean loved his daughter – no doubt about that – and she’d miss him. But her young mind would forget. Years down the line questions would start about who her father was and why they weren’t with him. When she was old enough to understand, her mother would tell her. All of it.

  Kim heard footsteps on the stairs and prayed Sean wasn’t coming to make a scene. He’d been a heavy drinker when they met – now, it was out of control. As long as he left her alone, she couldn’t care less how much he drank.

  The footsteps stopped. The door handle turned. Kim watched, terrified, aware how vulnerable she was. She called to him, trying to sound unafraid. ‘Please, Sean, go away! Please!’

  The frame cracked and buckled, the lock sprang loose and three men came through the door; hard-faced thugs with pitiless eyes, dressed like burglars in jeans and black polo necks – Sean had an army of them. One she’d seen before, the others strangers.

  Kim lifted a hairbrush, brandishing it like a knife, screaming at them. ‘Get out! Whoever you are, stay away from me! I’m warning you, stay away!’