by Val McDermid
Carlyle sighed and clicked the end of the pen half a dozen times. ‘It’s plausible, Burns. But it’s no more than that. You’ve not got a shred of evidence. Nothing that places Torrance anywhere near Danny’s flat on Saturday night. Nothing but hearsay about any of this. Torrance could argue that Danny was just making up malicious lies to discredit Wee Gordon’s source, to make himself look like the main man on the investigative side of things. You can’t even begin to stand it up.’
Allie had an idea how she might do that. But she wasn’t going to run it past Carlyle and risk ridicule or failure. ‘You think I don’t know that? But the polis aren’t even looking anywhere else now they’ve got Barry What’s-his-name in the frame. Boss, give me two days off the rota. Two days and a pic man.’
‘What do you want a pic man for?’
She found a cheeky smile from somewhere. ‘Taking pictures?’
Carlyle sighed. ‘Let me think about it. Away down to the canteen for an hour.’
Two hours later, Allie was folded on to a makeshift bench in the back of a van that claimed to belong to Plumb-It Services. In reality, Plumb-It Services consisted of a magnetised plastic board stuck to the side of a Hillman Imp van. It held no plumbing supplies, just a low bench, a tin of biscuits and a cardboard box with half a dozen cans of Irn Bru. It also held the van’s owner, Bobby Gibson. One of the reasons Bobby G was Allie’s favourite photographer was the van, evidence of his dedication to getting the snap that counted. It was elderly, shabby and inconspicuous, the sort of tradesman’s white van that nobody would give a second look. But the back windows were one-way glass, meaning Bobby could stake out his targets without being seen.
They were parked at the mouth of Douglas Lane, the rear of the van facing Strathclyde Police HQ. Two cameras on tripods pointed at the entrance to the building. When Carlyle had given Allie the go-ahead, she’d asked him where Torrance was based, knowing that if he was unaware himself, he’d soon find out. But he’d told her immediately that Torrance worked out of the Pitt Street HQ. So now she was playing the waiting game with Bobby G.
‘Do you think he’ll come out for his dinner?’ Bobby asked, not for the first time.
‘We don’t even know for sure if he’s in today.’
‘You could phone and see.’
‘How? If I go off to find a phone box, he could do a naked Highland Fling on the front steps and you wouldn’t know it was him.’
Bobby chuckled. ‘Ever since we did that nudist beach story, you’re obsessed with people running about in the scud.’
Time crawled by. By two o’clock, they both agreed Torrance wasn’t taking a lunch break. Allie tried to teach Bobby to play ‘I’m not Napoleon’, a game she’d learned on long car trips back to Scotland with a couple of fellow Cambridge students. ‘I don’t know anything about anything,’ Bobby had protested after Allie’s first attempt left him in the dust.
‘I probably shouldn’t have gone with Virginia Woolf,’ she conceded.
‘The trouble with you, Burns, is you want to win all the time.’
‘The trouble with me is that I don’t think that’s a problem.’
Three hours trickled past and they were losing the light. ‘I can’t get a decent shot in this,’ Bobby complained. ‘The length of exposure I need, unless your man stands like a statue, all I’ll get is a blur.’
‘I know. But I need you to see him. That way, I don’t have to stick to you like a limpet all day tomorrow. You can sit and scratch your balls in peace.’
Another half hour, then the door opened and three men came out together, talking and laughing. ‘That’s him,’ Allie exclaimed. ‘The man in the middle. That’s Torrance.’
Instinctively Bobby’s finger hit the button and the motor drive fired off a bunch of photographs. ‘Pointless,’ he muttered. ‘Do you want me to follow him?’
‘Is it worth it?’
‘At least it’ll give me an idea which direction he’ll be coming from in the morning.’ As he spoke, he pushed the partition between the rear compartment and the seats out of the way and climbed out, throwing the keys back to Allie. ‘Take it back to the office car park, I’ll catch you there later.’ And he was gone, walking briskly after the trio.
She watched them to the corner, where they stopped. A few words exchanged, then Torrance headed right while the other two went left, towards the city centre. She clambered into the driving seat and set her course for the office, passing both Bobby G and Torrance on the way.
She didn’t have long to wait for Bobby to return. ‘He picked a car up from the parking area under the Kingston Bridge,’ he reported. ‘So tomorrow, I can set up with a better chance of catching him face on. Meet me in the office car park at half past seven.’ Seeing her expression, he grinned. ‘He left early. He might be an early bird.’
Allie was home in time to actually cook a proper meal for once. The only problem was that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone shopping. The fridge was almost bare, save for some elderly potatoes and three onions that were sprouting green shoots. There was however a tin of corned beef in the cupboard, which meant she had all she needed for stovies. You could never go wrong with a plate of stovies, in Allie’s opinion.
As it cooked, she poured herself a beer and wished Danny was there to bounce her ideas off. She’d lost count of the number of times in the past couple of days she’d caught herself on the edge of asking Danny his opinion.
But if it was bad for her, how much worse must it be for his family? Danny had been so determined to prove to his parents that he was doing good in the world but his killer had robbed him of any chance of reconciliation.
On the spur of the moment, Allie called the newsdesk. ‘Have we got a number for Danny Sullivan’s parents?’ she asked the secretary.
‘Sure. I don’t usually give out numbers, but seeing as it’s you, Allie . . .‘ The sound of her flicking through her Rolodex. Then she read out the number. ‘How are you doing yourself?’
‘Just about holding together. Thanks, you’re a pal.’
Allie took a deep breath and dialled. The voice that answered was deep and male and exhausted. ‘Who is this?’ he said.
‘Mr Sullivan? My name’s Allie Burns. We’ve not met, but I worked side by side with Danny these past few weeks. I’m the one—’
‘You’re the one that found him.’ His voice was flat and cold.
‘I can’t tell you how sad and sorry I am about Danny.’
A long pause. Allie willed herself not to gabble.
‘We still can’t take it in. But thanks for phoning.’
She sensed he was about to put the phone down. But she still had important things to say. ‘Don’t go, Mr Sullivan. I wanted to tell you how much Danny loved you all. You were at the heart of everything he did.’
A bitter little laugh. ‘Tell that to his brother. It’s hard to get by the last thing Danny did to this family.’
‘Mr Sullivan, he did everything he could to keep Joseph in the clear. But Danny had too much integrity to turn a blind eye to crime and corruption. He couldn’t ignore something that was staring him in the face. It tore him apart, Mr Sullivan. It tore him apart.’
‘Good. Because that’s what it did to us. And now we’ve lost him and we have no idea why.’
Allie felt herself tearing up. ‘This story we did last week – Danny kept telling me he hoped it would show you and his mum that he was doing good work. Important work. That he was doing the right thing. He was desperate to make you proud of him, Mr Sullivan. Desperate.’ She heard another voice in the background. Higher pitched, questioning in tone, words indistinct. ‘He wanted your forgiveness. He wanted you to understand why—’
‘I can’t do this, lassie.’ His voice cracked. ‘Talk to his mother.’
The scuffling of a handset handover, the muffling of an exchange, then the thin voice of Marie Sul
livan filled her ear. ‘Eddie says you’re the one who found my Danny?’
‘That’s right. I’d gone round for my dinner, we were supposed to be celebrating—’
‘Were you his girlfriend?’ his mother interrupted.
Christ, not this again. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. We were friends. We worked together. I really liked Danny but not in that way. I respected him. I admired him. I looked up to him.’
‘Aye, well, a couple of weeks ago I’d have said the same thing. Then you and him, between you, you did for Joseph.’
‘Danny tried to protect Joseph, he really did. He nearly ditched the whole story, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn a blind eye to Paragon, breaking the law, ripping off all of us who pay our taxes. Danny had such strong principles, Mrs Sullivan. You brought him up to be honest, to tell the truth. And he loved you for it.’
A stifled sob. ‘Aye, and it killed him.’
‘We don’t know why Danny was killed, Mrs Sullivan. But one thing I do know is that he hated falling out with you. He was desperate to find a way back into your good graces. That’s why he was so determined to chase stories that really mattered. And I was proud to help him. Because I know how much his family meant to him.’
‘He’s away now, and that’s all that matters to me. And it was thanks to the likes of you encouraging him that he fell out with us in the first place. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to hang up now.’ And she did. So much for trying to ease their pain, Allie thought bitterly. She’d have been better off leaving well alone.
An intense smell from the kitchen alerted her to an imminent danger to her dinner. Automatically, she dished up a steaming plate of stovies, then realised her appetite had vanished. She scraped the food back into the pan, feeling inadequate and stupid. Was there anything she could do to make things better for the Sullivans? Would finding reasons for what had happened give them any ease? She sat staring into space, then at length it occurred to her that she still hadn’t looked at Danny’s notebook. She fetched it from her bag and turned to the last page of notes. It was dated ‘27/1’ in the top right-hand corner. Saturday’s date. Was this something to do with their story?
In the margin, where reporters left asterisks or hashmarks to identify an interviewee, there were two short horizontal dashes near the top of the space between the lines – marks that indicated two Ts. Who else but Thomas Torrance?
Allie frowned at the Teeline script on the page. Danny’s outlines seemed particularly clear and crisp. She flicked back a couple of pages and saw that his normal shorthand was much scrappier. Had he deliberately made this note more legible, as an insurance policy, a final act of revenge if anything were to happen to him?
She scribbled down her interpretation of the symbols: TT cld. Sd 2 kp m ns ot / ls. Sd hd B kpng i on m. Sd 2 frgt RF. Familiar with the contractions the system used, Allie translated it as, ‘Thomas Torrance called. Said to keep my nose out or else. Said he’d be keeping an eye on me. Said to forget RF.’ Who could only be Roddy Farquhar.
It was a note that left more questions than answers. At times like this, Allie missed her flatmates in Newcastle. With them, she could have thrashed it out over the dinner table with a couple of beers. Among them, they’d work out the permutations and agree on the most reasonable option.
She eyed the phone. The only person she had anything like that connection with here was Rona. But she was reluctant to impose on a friendship so new. The last thing she wanted was for Rona to think she was needy and desperate.
On the other hand, there had been nothing feigned about Rona’s interest when Allie had related the events of Sunday to her. And she was a journalist too. How could she not be interested? Putting her reservations aside, she headed for the phone and dialled Rona’s number before she could think twice.
It took her so long to answer that Allie was on the point of hanging up. Rona sounded out of breath when she answered with her number. ‘It’s Marple here. I deduce you just got in,’ Allie said.
‘Some of us have to work for a living. How are you doing?’
Allie brought her up to speed, finishing with her transliteration of Danny’s note. ‘But here’s what isn’t clear to me. When Danny says, “Thomas Torrance called,” does he mean a phone call, or that he called round in person?’
‘You could take it either way, but I think if Torrance had been there in person, Danny would have expressed himself differently. Do you not think he’d have said something like, “Torrance came round”?’
‘Maybe. But even if it was only a phone call, that doesn’t mean Torrance didn’t follow up with a visit in person. Danny’s response might have worried him enough to provoke him into action.’
Rona made an indeterminate noise in the back of her throat. ‘It’s weak,’ she said. ‘You’re going to need a lot more than that before you point the finger at somebody who could make your life hell. Guys like Torrance, they’ve got a long reach. Every petty misdemeanour, you’ll have the polis on your back. Drive a mile over the speed limit, they’ll be on your tail. Take one drink over the limit and drive home, you’ll be busted. And that’s before we even get to the drugs they’ll find in your car when they pull you over. These arseholes stick together, doll.’
‘I know. That’s why I’ve got Bobby G on the stake-out.’
‘How is a picture going to help you, though? Are you going door to door down Danny’s street? Because I’d bet you a pound to a gold clock everybody was tucked up round the telly on Saturday night. It was snowing like buggery, remember?’
‘I’ve got something better than that. I’ve got a secret weapon.’
Rona gave a dark chuckle. ‘Why am I not surprised? I suspect you’ve got a whole bloody arsenal of them. So what’s your secret weapon?’
‘A man called Jimmy.’
52
Tuesday was taking a long time to wake up. A low mass of cloud squatted over the city, threatening rain but not quite following through. What the morning did deliver to Allie and Bobby G was Thomas Torrance, swaggering down Pitt Street without an apparent care in the world. Captured full face on both cameras, in colour and in black-and-white. They were back in the office before nine, Bobby making straight for the darkrooms on the floor below the news and picture desks. Allie headed for the canteen, keen to avoid the questions of her colleagues. Armed with a scrambled egg roll and a mug of coffee, she made for the furthest corner and hid behind the broadsheet spread of the Scotsman. She’d have to show her face soon enough; Bobby had promised her prints in forty minutes.
She found him in the photographers’ room, sprawled on the sofa, a cardboard-backed envelope next to him. ‘Here’s your snaps.’ He passed it to her.
Allie took a look. Half a dozen shots, a mixture of black-and-white and colour. Two had caught Torrance in mid-stride, the others were close-ups. Nobody who’d encountered him could fail to recognise him. ‘Perfect. Thanks, Bobby.’
‘No bother, I like a challenge.’
On her way out, Gordon Beattie called her over. ‘A wee bit of news for you,’ he said. ‘Looks like the rent boy must have had an accomplice.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘According to my impeccable sources, they found a partial thumbprint on the candlestick.’ He paused for effect. ‘And it doesn’t match Curran.’
‘And you assume he had an accomplice, rather than it was nothing to do with him.’
Beattie chuckled. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, darling. He was there. His kind, they’re no strangers to violence and crime. He’ll have let one of his wee pals in, maybe to see what he could rob while Curran was distracting Danny.’
‘You’ve got a nasty mind, Gordon.’ Allie paused, as if struck by a thought. ‘Have they got your prints on file, by the way?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Fuck do you mean by that?’
She shrugged. ‘Just curious. Last time we were all
together, you were pretty upset at the thought of Danny running an investigations team.’
‘You’re a cheeky wee bitch, you know that, Burns?’
‘I’ve been called worse.’ She turned to go.
‘By the way, did you see the notice about Danny’s wake?’ There was a malicious smile on his face now.
The words caught her by surprise, bringing a stab of grief. ‘No. When is it?’
‘Friday night, at the Press Club. There’ll be a good turn-out.’
Disgusted at this hypocrisy, she gave a curt nod. ‘Thanks for pointing it out.’ Even though it was the last place she’d want to be, she’d show her face. She walked back down the newsroom, oblivious to the activity around her. She’d almost made it to the lifts when she heard a familiar voice. She turned to see Rona waving to her.
‘I need a minute,’ Rona said.
Allie managed a smile. ‘Sure.’
‘Come into my office, there’s nobody else in yet.’
Allie followed her into the tiny cubicle that barely had room for the three desks of the trio who worked on the women’s pages. The walls frothed with glamour shots, pages torn out of magazines and advertising posters for make-up. The cluttered desks were littered with samples of everything from vitamins to face-packs. Rona pointed her to one of the chairs. Allie couldn’t read her expression. She seemed uncharacteristically nervous. ‘What is it?’
‘This is really awkward,’ Rona said.
‘Hey, I’m a hack, I’ve heard it all.’
‘The guy that the polis have arrested for Danny’s murder? The one you think maybe didn’t do it?’
