by Val McDermid
Allie scoffed. ‘They should be giving us a commendation.’
‘What? For making them look stupid? Don’t hold your breath. Anyway, I wanted to let you know I’m not behind bars.’
‘Have they tracked down Roddy Farquhar?’
‘If they have, they’ve not told me.’
‘You don’t think that’s suspicious? The one person who could point the finger at Torrance is nowhere to be found?’
‘Of course it’s suspicious.’
‘You don’t think Torrance has . . . disappeared him?’
Danny scoffed. ‘What have you been smoking, Allie? I think he’s warned him off, not bumped him off. Probably helped him to drop out of sight, but no more than that.’
‘All the same . . . Farquhar’s the only one who could drop Torrance in the shit, and suddenly he’s out of the picture.’
‘I’m with you, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Torrance tipped off Farquhar, but there’s nothing we can do about that. If we accuse Torrance, we’d have to unspool to how I knew about their connection. And I can’t do that, Allie.’
‘I know.’ All the same, part of her wanted to find a way to expose the underhand dealing of the Special Branch man. And to show Carlyle that Wee Gordon Beattie’s relationship with his contacts sometimes involved him supping a little too heartily with the devil. If she and Danny were running investigations at the Clarion, they’d find a different way to the truth. What was the point of uncovering corruption if you were as corrupt as those you were exposing?
Danny interrupted her train of thought. ‘You still on for tomorrow?’
‘Looking forward to it.’
‘I’ll away to Presto and get the messages, then. See you tomorrow.’
There was much more she wanted to ask, but it could wait for tomorrow. She picked up her book again and as she returned to the secret world, she realised with a jolt how indiscreet she’d been with Danny. Given what she’d been reading, she couldn’t help wondering whether the police had their phones tapped. Had that been the click of a listening device she’d heard, or just the usual crap GPO line? Allie gave a scornful little laugh. Who did she think she was?
Bath over, she dressed and made herself scrambled eggs with a couple of fried potato scones and carried on reading at the kitchen table. She was disturbed again by the phone; her parents had seen the story and in their awkward way wanted to congratulate her. Her mother, of course, was anxious about the people she was mixing with. Her father was more straightforwardly pleased. All told, it was an easier conversation than they usually managed. Maybe they were coming round to the idea of her working for the Clarion.
Afterwards, she went through to the living room and put on Parallel Lines. She spent the afternoon writing letters to friends because today she had something to shout about. Into every envelope, she folded the relevant pages of the Clarion. The reporters she’d trained with in Newcastle would understand what had gone into copper-bottoming a story this intense, and envy her the opportunity to shine. Supersub Marcus would think about how he’d have arranged the material differently. Jen and her other friends from Cambridge days might even be impressed, though she knew that they secretly thought her new employer was decidedly infra dig.
Allie had almost finished the last letter when the phone rang again. Hoping it wasn’t the office, she answered with a cautious, ‘Yes?’
‘Hey, Scoop! It’s me, Rona. I know you’ll have heard this half a million times already, but you are a wee star. Great job, girl!’
Allie chuckled. ‘Takes one to know one.’
‘Shut up with the false modesty. I’ve never ever done stories like this. The nearest I’ve come to putting my life in danger is giving a fashion designer a lukewarm review. But I tell you, you’re not just taking on the bad guys, you’re making some serious political enemies too. I don’t think those nice lassies you made pals with at the SNP meeting are going to be inviting you to their next hen night.’ Rona hooted with laughter.
‘Come on, be fair. I made it clear that these bams were nothing to do with the SNP. There’s even a quote from their press officer expressing their horror and outrage.’
Another throaty laugh. ‘Two pars, right at the end. They’ll not be happy with anything less than an intro that went something like, “SNP leaders denied last night that they had ever heard of the conspiracy to bomb Scotland into independence.” No, Allie, you’re well and truly screwed with the Nats.’
‘Into every life, a little rain must fall, Rona.’
‘Watch out, Allie. When they rule the world, you’ll not be getting any of Scotland’s oil. Anyway, I’ll not keep you, I just wanted to congratulate you.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it. Do you want to do lunch one day next week? I’ll be back on the rota on Monday, starting with the day shift.’
A momentary pause, then Rona said, ‘What about dinner instead? You know you can never predict what you’ll be doing on the day shift.’
She had a point. ‘Fair enough. I think my diary’s clear, since I’ll not be going to any SNP meetings.’
They settled on Wednesday, and Allie went back to her letter-writing. A brisk walk to the pillar box and back to her flat. Some people might consider a Saturday night alone on the sofa with a good book and a box of chocolates to be pretty pitiful. After the week she’d had, Allie thought it was pretty close to paradise.
And besides, it was the first chance she’d had to think about what Danny had told her about Rona’s sexuality. She’d encountered lesbians before, but none of them had become close friends. She recognised how quickly she’d warmed to Rona and that she wanted them to be friends. But would the ground between them shift now she’d learned about such an important aspect of Rona’s life?
When she woke up next morning, the buzz in Allie’s blood had stilled. Anticlimax had kicked in, and she didn’t have the faintest inkling of the next project that would release her from the tyranny of whatever the newsdesk thought she should be doing. Rona’s tip about the pregnant football referee might grant her a day’s grace, but it wasn’t going to reinforce the marker that the terrorist story had put down.
News of the arrests of Malloch and Bell and of four Irish suspects had made all of the Scottish Sunday papers. Even the Sunday Thistle had given it a few paragraphs. There were hints of a terror plot, but the rules governing what could be reported following an arrest meant the stories read as if written in code. When the two men were charged, there would be another trickle of information, but the major coverage wouldn’t come till the trial, and that was months away.
Hopefully Danny would raise her spirits. Together they might even come up with a story idea. Surely there must be some thread they could pull to unravel a story that would get them back on the front page?
Allie decided to take a cab over to Danny’s. It wasn’t that she wanted to drink much. But she was fed up of wrestling the heavy steering of the Morris Minor through icy streets. Sitting in the back of the lumbering taxi, she was grateful not to be peering through a blurred windscreen at the sleet. She hurried from the warmth of the taxi into the welcome shelter of the close.
She rang Danny’s doorbell and waited. And waited. She rang again, lips pursed. He must have forgotten some key ingredient and popped out to the shop. Already she could feel the cold from the stone stairs creeping into her feet. This was ridiculous. If she hung about on the landing, she’d be chilled to the bone in no time. Danny wouldn’t mind if she let herself in; she’d done it once before, after all.
She pushed the letterbox open and reached inside for the key. There was no welcoming aroma of roasting chicken, but then, the inner door was still closed. She pulled out the key and unlocked the tall wooden door. She stepped into the tiny vestibule and closed the outside door behind her, careful to pull the key back in.
Allie opened the half-glazed door that led into the hall. Definitely
no cooking smells. Had he forgotten their arrangement? Had he gone out partying and not come home? When it came down to it, what did she really know about Danny’s lifestyle?
The living room door was ajar and she could see the light was on. Not surprising on a grey Glasgow day, but she couldn’t imagine Danny going out for the evening and leaving the light on. Was he crashed out on one of his big black sofas after a heavy night? Allie pushed the living room door further open and walked in.
Shock saved her from understanding what she was looking at. Her brain had to unpick it in slow motion. The black-and-white room, that connected to her memory. The black onyx candlestick snagged at the corner of her mind. Out of place, that was the problem.
And the figure sprawled on the black-and-white rug . . . that didn’t fit at all. It was even more wrong.
But none of it was as profoundly wrong as the dark red stain that spread in a congealed puddle round the head of the dead body lying in the middle of Danny Sullivan’s living room.
47
When the police arrived, Allie was sitting on the floor of the hall, knees bent, arms wrapped around her shins. Even though there was still some residual warmth from the central heating’s morning cycle, spasms of shivering shook her from stem to stern at unpredictable intervals. Her brain too seemed to stutter from one thought to another. Who had done this? What would Carlyle say? Could the rug be cleaned? Where were Danny’s notes? Was the chicken in the fridge? Nothing made any sense.
First on the scene, two uniforms. A bulky middle-aged man with ginger-and-silver hair peeping from his cap and an accent that Allie automatically placed somewhere in the Western Isles; a younger one with almost translucent skin who said nothing and stood chewing his bottom lip. Probably chapped from the cold, Allie thought inconsequentially. She’d got unsteadily to her feet to answer the doorbell and now she didn’t know where to stand.
‘I’m PC Macleod, and this is PC Campbell,’ the older man said. ‘Was it you who called 999?’
Allie nodded.
‘Can I take your name?’
Campbell took out a small black notebook and started writing.
‘Allie Burns. Alison.’
‘And do you live here, Alison?’ Macleod’s voice was surprisingly gentle, she noticed.
‘No. I was coming for my dinner. Danny was going to do a roast chicken.’ As if that mattered.
‘You told my colleague there was a dead man in the living room. Would that be Danny?’
She nodded. ‘It’s his flat. Danny Sullivan.’
Campbell made an indeterminate noise. Macleod gave him an inquisitorial look and the younger man spoke. ‘Are youse the journalists on the Clarion?’ Campbell sounded full of doubt. ‘The ones that turned over the terrorist Nats?’
‘Yes, but that’s not what matters. Danny’s dead, that’s what you should be doing something about.’ Allie had raised her voice without thinking.
‘I appreciate you’ve had a shock. But we just need to get one or two things clear in our minds.’ Macleod cocked his head towards the living room and Campbell made his way to the door. He turned back and nodded. Another gesture of Macleod’s head and Campbell went back out to the landing, pulling the internal door closed behind him. Detached, Allie noted the low rumble of his voice and the crackle of a police radio.
‘PC Campbell is letting the control room know we need a specialist team.’
‘A murder team,’ Allie said. ‘I mean, he didn’t hit himself over the head with a candlestick, did he?’ She felt her voice shake and clamped her mouth shut.
‘Was he your boyfriend?’
If it was an attempt to take her mind off the terrible image of Danny lying on the cowskin rug, it failed. All it did was make it worse. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was my friend. My colleague. Is that too hard to grasp?’
‘I’m just trying to get things clear in my mind, Miss Burns. Now, why don’t you come through to the kitchen till my colleagues get here?’
She followed him out of the hall and sat down at the kitchen table. There was no sign of any cooking preparations. Had Danny been lying there all night? Had it been quick, or had he lain for minutes or hours, in pain? Drifting in and out of consciousness? Had he known he was dying?
‘I’ll just leave you here,’ Macleod said, edging warily out of the room. She didn’t think he was a man who felt comfortable at the prospect of other people’s emotions. Allie lit a cigarette, noticing that her fingers were not trembling. She’d never seen a dead body before and episodes of Shoestring and Sutherland’s Law hadn’t been much of a preparation for the real thing. She hadn’t expected Danny to look so empty, which made her feel stupid.
Allie needed to displace the image of Danny lying dead on the rug. There was a pile of newspapers next to her, and almost without thinking she began flicking through them. Top of the pile was the previous day’s Clarion with their splash on display. Had that only been yesterday? It felt like ancient history now. How could Danny be dead?
She picked up the paper, then noticed Danny’s notebook sitting underneath it. It was the same Clarion-issue pad all the reporters used. She had its double in her own bag. Spiral-bound, small enough to slip into a pocket, lined pages with a margin so the interviewer could mark the significant quotes as they went along. Technically, she knew, it was the property of the paper. Anything Danny had noted down belonged to the Clarion. She wondered whether he had transcribed all his notes. She ought to take it back to the office to make sure, she thought. It was her story as much as his.
Besides, the police wouldn’t be able to make head nor tail of it. Allie was pretty sure that anyone who worked with the police or the courts would use the traditional Pitman’s shorthand. Accurate and formal, it took time and skill to master. But for her generation of reporters, it had been replaced by Teeline, a much simpler system based on stripping down the forms of letters and interpreting signs according to where they appeared in relation to the lines on the page. But where a Pitman’s note could be read by anyone familiar with its forms, Teeline was idiosyncratic. No two people’s outlines were the same. Allie often found she couldn’t even interpret her own note if she’d left it more than a couple of weeks. For someone expert in Pitman’s it might as well be written in Ancient Greek. The best chance of anyone making sense of Danny’s notes was not simply that they used Teeline – they’d also have to know what the notes were about.
Without any further debate, Allie slipped Danny’s notebook into her bag. It wasn’t as if she was withholding evidence from the police. If there was a clue to the identity of his killer in what he’d written, she was their best hope of finding it. She’d examine his notes and if she found anything she didn’t already know, she’d pass it on to the detectives.
Then the enormity of what she’d seen hit her again and an overwhelming wave of nausea hit her. She barely made it to the sink, and she was still retching when she heard footsteps and voices in the hall. She rinsed her mouth from the tap and was spitting the water back into the sink when a middle-aged man with a bald head and the face of an unsuccessful prize fighter appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Buchan. You’re the lassie who found the body, I take it?’ He had the kind of Glasgow accent that made the most innocuous remark sound like a threat.
‘Yes, that’s me.’ Allie heard the wobble in her voice.
‘And you arrived when, exactly?’ She told him, and he nodded. ‘We’re going to need to take a statement from you. Are you happy to do that here, or would you prefer to do it back at the division?’
The thought of sitting in Danny’s kitchen surrounded by things he’d chosen while the police picked over the circumstances of his death made her shudder. ‘Anywhere but here,’ she said.
The witness interview had swiftly turned into something unexpected. The room was cramped and stank of male sweat and stale cigarettes and the two officers sitting opposite h
er seemed intent on browbeating her into some sort of admission. Detective Sergeant Hardie and Detective Constable Groom had the flat cynical eyes of men who had seen every sort of lie. They both had a cultivated air of disbelief that occasionally tilted over into incredulity and Allie didn’t know how to counter it.
‘Look, I’ve told you. Danny invited me round for a roast chicken dinner. To celebrate our story. I turned up as we’d arranged, and I found him lying on the living room floor.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Dead. I called 999, and the rest you know.’
Hardie raised his eyebrows. ‘So you’ve said. But here’s the thing, Alison. When it comes to murder, we are the boys with the know-how. And one thing we know for sure is that everybody in a murder case lies. Sometimes innocent wee white lies, but sometimes big fat guilty ones. Now, which kind is it with you, my darling?’
‘I’m not your darling and I’m not lying,’ Allie said, her jaw tight. Anger had moved her grief to the back burner.
Groom leaned forward. ‘Here’s something else we know. Often the last person to see a victim alive is the same person who calls in to say they’ve discovered a body. So when did you really arrive at Danny’s flat? Because it seems to me that if you were planning a proper celebration, you’d have done that on Saturday night. I mean, that’s when folk round here party.’
‘Remind us what you were doing on Saturday night.’ Hardie again. It was relentless.
‘It doesn’t matter how many times you ask me that. The answer’ll be the same because it’s the truth. I wrote some letters to friends. I heated up some soup for my tea then I lay on the settee with a box of chocolates and the new John Le Carré novel. I never left the house.’
‘But you can’t produce any witnesses to back you up. Nobody phoned. Nobody popped in. Nobody can prove you’re telling the truth. What’s to say you weren’t round at Danny Sullivan’s flat, having a wee celebration?’
