The DCI David Fyfe Mysteries

by William Paul

  Munro was a tall, wide-shouldered man, almost too big for the narrow corridor of the house. He was in his fifties and Fyfe knew him well from old drinking and storytelling sessions. He had a broken nose and a huge chin hanging like the pouch of a pelican’s beak. He had the kind of blunt, no-nonsense approach to police work that Fyfe admired. He had been divorced twice and married three times and had an infant son a few months younger than his first grandchild. Old men will be old men, he was fond of saying.

  ‘Anyway, I’m told you were checking this priest out for fiddling the parish expenses,’ Munro said.

  ‘Not quite as straightforward as that, I’m afraid. It was the boss priest here who is the prime suspect, fat Father Quinn. Father Byrne turned him in, shopped him to Bishop Whatsisname.’

  ‘Delaney.’

  ‘Yeah. Delaney wanted the investigation to be done on the quiet and our Sir Duncan used to be an altar boy or something so I was sent round to do his bidding.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Hunky Dunky won’t be able to keep it quiet now. What have you got so far?’

  ‘It doesn’t take much detective work to see that Quinn is as guilty as sin. He admits it.’

  ‘Did you talk to Byrne?’

  ‘Very briefly. I had arranged to interview him this morning. Looks like he is otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Was he a crook too?’

  ‘Well, he was a shifty-looking character and fat Father Quinn will tell you that his assistant priest was the main man in the money-embezzling racket. Who knows?’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Maybe. I didn’t take to the poor bastard but that was just a first impression. Quinn hated him but that could have been his guilty conscience. The Bishop had a high opinion of him, for what that’s worth.’

  ‘Archbishop actually.’

  ‘Does that make his opinion worth more?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What are the chances of suicide? The crags are a favourite place.’

  ‘Absolutely nil. Unless he smashed in his own head with a handy boulder when the fall didn’t do the trick. We’ve got the blunt instrument. No, the scenario is he was pushed off the crags and then the murderer came down and finished him off as he lay moaning in the moonlight.’

  Fyfe wondered when it had happened. Maybe while Sylvia was stripping off and climbing on top of him on the fireside chair. Maybe when they had moved through to the bedroom. ‘Got a time of death?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. We’re assuming it was around midnight.’ Munro sighed deeply. ‘We’re not getting much sense out of the housekeeper. She’s in shock. She was rambling about this guy Quinn. I couldn’t work out who he was supposed to be.’

  ‘Quinn’s the boss priest. He’s in a retreat up in Tayside. I was there yesterday.’

  ‘Could it have been him?’

  ‘No.’ Fyfe said it quickly and then thought about it. ‘No. He wouldn’t be capable. I liked him.’

  ‘That is hardly evidence for the defence. When did you leave him?’

  ‘Don’t know. Round about four or five.’

  ‘So he had plenty of time to sneak down here and bump off his pal?’

  ‘I suppose so. It never occurred to me. But I’ll tell you this, Mrs McMorrow knows who did it.’

  Munro was wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He stopped in mid-wipe. His large head seemed to be balanced on the axis of the flat hand under the end of his nose. Then he snorted derisively and it fell off.

  ‘It’s true,’ Fyfe insisted. ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t told you. It was the Devil. For her, everything is the Devil’s work.’

  Munro snorted again and wiped his nose with his other hand. ‘It will never stand up in court. By the way, Dave, you look dreadful. If you were to be found at the foot of Salisbury Crags they would think you were dead too. Didn’t you sleep last night?’

  ‘Where have you been, Mark? Looking bad like this is the latest in masculine fashion. Don’t you know I’m photogenic?’

  ‘Christ, Dave, you haven’t shaved, your suit’s died the death of a thousand creases, and your breath would knock over a skunk at fifty yards.’

  ‘Just like old times, eh?’ Fyfe said, putting a hand over his mouth. ‘I’ll go take another shower and freshen up. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I do have one hot tip. The housekeeper was able to tell us about a block of flats the Church runs down the bottom of Easter Road. They provide accommodation for ex-cons and reformed druggies. Anyway, she… McMan… Mc…’

  ‘Mrs McMorrow.’

  ‘She says the newest tenant had been with Father Byrne more or less all day since he collected him from Saughton. They had been driving around together. Byrne gave him money.’

  ‘I wonder if he has an alibi.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out. I’m going round there now with the boys. Want to come? You’ve met the bloke before.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘A long time ago. It took me a while to put a crime to the name but I remembered in the end. If I’m right you were in the squad that lifted him originally, Dave.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Think of the big security van robbery about ten years ago. More than a million quid vanished into thin air and that mad bastard Mike Barrie topped himself in a gun siege.’

  Munro had his arm round Fyfe’s shoulder and they were walking down the corridor. The pain in Fyfe’s sore head was snuffed out, overwhelmed by the dizzying sensation of a great echoing empty space inside his skull. The connections were fitting into place. He let himself be steered towards the outside door, thinking of Lord Greenmantle’s story about Adamson’s parole only being granted because Sylvia had accepted his proposal of marriage.

  Things were happening out there, Fyfe thought. They had been happening as he and Greenmantle had stared out the window into the darkness. Happening as he and Sylvia made love for old times’ sake. Wheels within wheels. Ancient cause and delayed effect.

  ‘John Adamson,’ Fyfe replied. ‘I was talking about him to a friend just last night.’

  ‘What a coincidence. You did arrest him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I put him away.’

  ‘Small world, isn’t it?’

  ‘Small city too. This is spooky. Say the name and he pops up. I can hardly believe it.’

  ‘Well, believe it. He’s back. Let’s go and see what he has to say for himself.’

  39

  Angela Simpson caught a glimpse of central London as the plane descended through a hole in the clouds. She saw the twist of the river and church spires, and office blocks, and buildings stretching endlessly in every direction among the patchwork of green spaces all trussed up by the stringy lines of roads and streets. Puffs of cloud sped past the window, reminding her of a journey in a steam train with her father when she was a very young girl. The carriage had smelled of leather and rain-damp clothes. She was standing in her father’s lap, fascinated by the vibration of the glass against her hands. When the train rounded a bend she could see the engine up ahead puffing great gouts of white smoke, and she could feel fingers burrowing in under the elastic of her knickers. The bastard, she thought, squeezing her empty plastic glass until it cracked. May he rot in hell for ever.

  The plane seemed to pick up speed as it got closer to the ground. Two long-necked swans flew alongside, their wings beating in perfect synchronisation. Angela turned her head to keep them in view as the plane approached Heathrow but within seconds the beautiful white birds were too far behind. A stewardess took her cracked gin glass and the miniature bottles.

  Angela had helped herself to five gins on the flight and was feeling drunkenly sleepy. She was still surprised she had actually gone through with it, still a little in shock that she had been brave enough to pack her bags and leave, even if she had bought a return ticket for insurance. For the time being at least, she was finally on her own.

  She hadn’t felt like this since she was a trembling fourteen-year-old, sitting on her bed, staring in
awe at the door through which her father had fled, the bloodstained razor blade in her hand dripping thickly on to the sheets. Something was hardening inside her again, had been doing so for several days, as it had done before on that single night when she had somehow found the strength to liberate herself from a lifetime of abuse. It was a watershed, a point of no return, the birth of an implacable determination.

  The wheels bumped on the runway, screeched and rumbled. Home at last, somebody shouted from the front like a black revivalist preacher and there was a ripple of amused cheering. But she wasn’t home yet. She had to find her way across the terminal to catch the Edinburgh shuttle. Another plane, another couple of gins. She slipped a little deeper into her maudlin mood.

  An hour later her home city was below, a shapeless mass of lights with the black hole of Arthur’s Seat at its centre. Here she had met and married Mike Barrie and watched him die. Their wedding, a fluffy-sleeved white dress and kilt and bow-tie affair, with her father giving her away, livid white scar tissue stretching from his forehead down through an eye and the corner of his mouth, petering out on his chin. He didn’t know then that he had just two weeks to live, stabbed to death in an apparently motiveless attack as he walked home from the pub. What a tragic homecoming for the young honeymooners who had enjoyed the most satisfying sex Angela had ever known that night.

  She had told Mike about the years of abuse and he had arranged to have her father killed for her. Simply. Clinically. No messing. Her father deserved to die, probably wanted to die to atone for his perversion. She certainly wanted him dead. He had never interfered with her again after she slashed him with the razor blade. Nine years they had played at proper father and daughter and never once had it been mentioned. Her mother had been too stupid, too frightened, or too ashamed to acknowledge its existence. The scar was explained away as the result of random violence. Poor bastard, seemed to attract motiveless attackers.

  Now it was another homecoming. Nine years she had waited patiently for her father’s death and it had been nine years since Mike buried her fortune and forgot to come home to give her the treasure map. There was a pleasing symmetry in that realisation. How long had she and Mike been married? God, yes. Nine years. The bloodletting, it appeared, had its own regular pattern, a periodic one like a menstrual cycle. She hiccupped loudly and held her hand to her mouth to stop a giggle following.

  The plane had landed and she had barely noticed. The passengers were standing up, collecting their belongings from the overhead lockers. Angela was thinking about the policeman informing her Mike was dead. He had been young, around the same age as her, and handsome in a hangdog sort of way. He had looked directly into her eyes and she had looked back. For a good two minutes they had tried to stare each other out. Then they had gone to bed and let their bodies do the talking. It wasn’t conventional police behaviour but she let herself be swept up in it. They talked about running away to Spain together. It had been a crazy time in her life. He was as mad as Mike himself in his own way, but he was married and wasn’t sure about dumping the wife. So Angela enjoyed the sex while it lasted and kissed him goodbye. Look me up if you ever come back this way, he had said. She could not even remember his name.

  Angela pulled herself to her feet and shuffled out into the aisle. She could not work the catch on her locker and finally somebody else reached over to open it. The unsolicited act made her realise she was drunk. She straightened her shoulders and began to take deep breaths, following the queue of slow-moving passengers off the plane, up the tunnel, through the corridors and finally down the steps into the arrivals hall where a sea of upturned faces waited.

  She had phoned Gus from Heathrow, told him the time of the shuttle and asked him to collect her. There he was, a little apart from the main crowd, slightly embarrassed it seemed, but smiling genuinely as he tried to wave to her without anybody else noticing.

  What was she doing here? Gus looked so like Mike standing there it frightened her. The brothers were so alike physically, yet complete opposites psychologically. Mike had been a doer. Gus was a fixer. Mike had been an unstable incendiary, Gus was a real slow-burning fuse.

  She was glad Gus didn’t see when a tear suddenly leaked spontaneously from the corner of her eye. She was able to brush it nonchalantly away with a fingertip. Memories of Mike often struck her like that, teasing her with visions of lost opportunities and the wasted potential of her life. The what-might-have-beens if his get-rich-quick scheme had worked first time out drove her crazy. If he hadn’t been so impatient, if he hadn’t killed himself rather than face prison, he would have been back with her now and the two of them could have ridden off into the sunset together and lived happily ever after. She would never have deserted Mike. She would have been the dutiful wife.

  She hurried over to Gus, colliding with a few bodies in the crowd, threw her arms round him dramatically and kissed him hard on the lips.

  ‘Welcome home,’ he said.

  ‘Nice to be here,’ she replied, hanging on to his arm. ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘For you I’ve got a big surprise.’

  40

  On the landing at the top of the stairs Mark Munro used the point of his index finger to push the door open. It moved sluggishly, held back by the carpet underneath its bottom edge.

  ‘Tut, tut,’ he said, stroking the splintered jamb. ‘Looks like somebody forgot their key.’

  Fyfe hesitated on the threshold and looked back over his shoulder at the door opposite. He had a feeling of being watched, of his every movement being observed by hidden eyes. He shook it off and followed Munro inside the flat to be followed himself by two other detective constables, Charlie Bain and Pete Crichton, and an elderly uniformed sergeant called Bill Campsie. The five of them stood together in the main room. The space was so cramped none of them could turn round without bumping into the others.

  ‘Cosy,’ Fyfe said.

  ‘Empty,’ Munro added. He had to stoop under the steep lie-in of the wall. ‘I think we can safely say he isn’t here without too extensive a search. There don’t seem to be many hiding places. Charlie, Pete, do a round of the neighbours. See if anybody knows where Mr Adamson is and what he has been up to.’

  Bain and Crichton made for the doorway, both trying to go through it at the same time and, in the best traditions of farce, having to readjust and draw back when they got stuck. Campsie waited until the misunderstanding was resolved, exchanged exasperated glances with his superiors, and strolled out casually, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Fyfe sat on the mattress on the bed. Munro moved into the centre of the room where he had the air space to stand. Muffled voices came from outside, and the distant sound of a door bell.

  ‘What do you think, then, Dave?’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘I think we’re on the right track. I can smell something rotten. We’re not far away here. Can you remember anything about Adamson? What kind of guy is he?’

  ‘It’s been nine years since we put him away,’ Fyfe said. ‘The case was a cracker; big money, blazing guns, sealed-off streets, Mad Mike blowing his head off, headlines six inches high. Adamson was the fall guy really. Hired muscle brought in at the last moment to carry some hardware and drive the getaway car. They hid the money in a half-built house that was burned down the same night they were arrested. It was set off by a booby trap that sprayed high octane petrol over all the walls. Everything inside was incinerated.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘I didn’t at first but we never did manage to break his story. Some bits of charred notes were found to back it up. Forensic said the intensity of the blaze was sufficient to vaporise paper. Adamson said Mike Barrie had set a booby trap on the cash and Forensic confirmed that was how it started. You know the kind, a candle burning down until it triggers an explosion. If they weren’t going to have the money, the bank wasn’t going to get it back. He said they had a suicide pact but he bottled out once he saw Mike’s head expl
ode.’

  ‘But do you believe it, Dave?’

  ‘Not at first. I, like many others, assumed he was a chancer. What finally convinced me is the fact that he has survived in prison all these years. If he had stashed the cash in a safe haven for his coming-out party I think big brother Gus Barrie might have had a quiet word with him before now.’

  ‘Is he a murderer?’

  ‘With a little encouragement I’m sure we all are. I was always suspicious about Mad Mike’s death. I had this theory at the time that Adamson might have killed him to make sure he got out alive, but nobody else seemed to think much of it. And there wasn’t any evidence, of course.’

  ‘If we wanted a conviction without evidence we could have sent him south to be tried in the English courts.’

  ‘There were just the two of them in that room,’ Fyfe continued. ‘Just the two, like you and me here now. If I was to take your gun, put it under your chin and pull the trigger then rapidly wipe all prints, stick the gun in your hand and fall on the floor a gibbering wreck, shocked by the sight of exploding human brains, I would get a lot of sympathy, I’ll tell you.’

  Munro rubbed his chin. ‘Okay, let’s come up to date. Where does this bloody dead priest fit in?’

  Fyfe shrugged. ‘Somewhere between the Devil and the slate grey sea.’

  The door burst open and Crichton stood in front of them. His eyes were protruding, his cheeks were red and he was panting heavily.

  ‘I think you should come and see this, sir,’ Crichton almost shouted before promptly turning round and hurrying out.

  Fyfe and Munro looked at each other quizzically and then followed, making sure they didn’t collide in the doorway. The door opposite on the landing was open and they were waved inside and directed towards the sound of running water and the steam clouds pouring from the bathroom. Munro was first in, Fyfe close behind. The cubicle door was open. The body was squashed into a corner. An arm extended from it with the wrist at a ninety degree angle. Four fingertips of the other hand were pressed hard against the opaque plastic wall forming a curve of bullet holes. A crust of red and black blood was on the edge of the shower tray.