Dark Suits and Sad Songs

by Denzil Meyrick

  Tired, drained and desperate to leave the office, Daley headed out to meet the lifeboat in which Dr Spence was bringing back the body found in the sea not far from a deserted stretch of the Kintyre coastline. Despite his fatigue, his policeman’s intuition, a warning bell that something was not right was ringing in his head.

  As luck would have it, when he pulled his car up by the pier, he spotted the distinctive orange-and-blue vessel re-entering the loch. The light and warmth of the midsummer evening was soothing as he waited. In his head the endless merry-go-round of Liz, the baby, Mary Dunn and Brian Scott turned, each presenting their own problems as they passed. To add to this parade, the charred figure of Walter Cudihey and the stench his burning corpse had left hanging over the town for most of the day, imprinted itself on his brain. And now, here he was awaiting the delivery of yet another problem.

  As arranged, the SOCO van drew up beside him just as the lifeboat was being secured alongside the pier. As usual, its arrival had attracted a small knot of curious locals, anxious to discover the reason behind the vessel’s call-out.

  ‘How you daein, Mr Daley? Whoot’s happenin’?’ asked an old man. ‘Jeest doon tae see whoot’s aboard? Or mebbe you know that already,’ he said, eyeing the SOCO personnel as they donned their white overalls at the side of their van.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about, Wattie,’ Daley replied. He was in no mood to play pass-the-parcel in the endless round of local gossip; gossip that he was now an integral part of.

  ‘Aye, jeest as you say. Though it’s no’ much that worries me these days.’ The fisherman winked. ‘Naethin tae dae, and a’ day tae dae it. Mebbes a few too many drams, noo and again. A wee bit like your man, eh?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Och, your friend Hamish. Taking another go at it this aft ernoon; came oot the Douglas Arms like a steam train at full tilt. Aye, taking both sides o’ the road, would have taken three, no doot, if the option had been available tae him. Steamin’ drunk, aye, fair mortal.’

  ‘Well, each to his own, Wattie.’

  ‘Aye, I daresay you have the right o’ it there, Mr Daley.’ He rubbed at the grey stubble on his chin. ‘His faither died o’ the booze, you’ll be mair than aware, I don’t doubt. Two of his uncles, tae. Aye, the whole family are fair steeped in the drink, an’ that’s a fact.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the information. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do.’ He smiled at Wattie, who winked back at him again. He tried not to listen to any of the gossip that passed his way, though, as a policeman, sometimes there was a kernel of truth to be sifted from the detritus. In any event, he was surprised to hear that Hamish was drinking heavily for a second day; strangely disconcerted, in fact. As he waved down to Dr Spence on the prow of the lifeboat, he put this to the back of his mind.

  Along with the SOCO team, Daley climbed gingerly aboard the rescue vessel, anxious not to tear the backside of yet another pair of trousers. In his head, he could hear Brian Scott making some ribald comment about his physique. He had actually managed to lose some weight over the last few months, but this had been prompted by stress and the absence of his wife, rather than a diet or fitness regime. These days, when he looked in the mirror he saw a man who seemed to have aged five years in as many months. Despite everything, he was looking forward to seeing Scott again; the man who had been his touchstone for so much of his career. Someone to help bear the burden.

  ‘Down here, Jim.’ Spence led Daley down steep metal steps into the body of the boat. The cabin had been converted into an emergency room, ready to help save the lives of those who had been pulled from the sea.

  A body lay underneath a green rubberised sheet on a metal gurney bolted to the floor.

  ‘I must say, Jim, I’ve read about this kind of thing. Never thought I’d be unlucky enough to come across a case of it though.’ Spence stood over the corpse. ‘I know you are, well, not the strongest stomached police officer I’ve ever come across. You might want to take a deep breath.’ He removed the green sheet.

  Daley saw the body of a man, unusually placed face down on the gurney. Ordinarily, the many cuts and bruises across his legs and back would indicate a beating of some sort, though Daley was aware that all kinds of trauma could be inflicted on a cadaver at sea.

  ‘You’ll note this,’ Spence continued, pointing to the exposed backside of the corpse. Badly discoloured by the ongoing process of putrification, as well as exposure to salt-water, many contusions adorned the backside. Without warning, Spence leaned over the body and parted the cheeks of the dead man’s buttocks.

  Daley could see something pale in colour, covered in blood and gore, but still discernible as foreign to the body.

  ‘What is that, Richard?’ Daley could already feel the bile in his throat.

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but my guess would be some kind of fast-acting, strong adhesive – super glue, if you like, probably augmented with some rubber adhesive material inside the rectum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, no wonder you look surprised, Jim. A favoured method of execution employed by drug cartels of Mexico, Colombia and Russia, I believe. Very nasty. They usually feed their victim up and insert the plug, oft en giving the victim something to induce diarrhoea. Of course, the bowels can’t void in the normal way, so they burst. Dreadful way to go. The cuts and abrasions to the backside have been caused by his desperate attempts to remove the obstruction, I suspect. Though it might not be what actually killed him. His internal injuries are so severe, he couldn’t have survived long – glue or no glue.’ Spence relayed this information in the detached way Daley was used to hearing from the many clinicians he had come into contact with over the years.

  ‘Yes, I’ve read about this, too. It’s oft en a punishment for senior gang members who stray, or informers, I believe.’ Daley gulped, doing his best to stave off nausea.

  ‘Apparently they oft en jump on the victim’s stomach in order to cause greater pain, though it’s impossible to tell if that’s what’s happened in this case. Jim.’

  Daley was kneeling now, looking at the dead man’s face, lying side on. ‘I know this man. It’s Rory Newell.’

  Daley hurried back up the steep metal steps and into the glorious evening sunshine, and spewed copiously over the side of the lifeboat, much to the interest of the small group of Kinloch residents who were looking on.

  As he tried to compose himself, Daley remembered the desperate search for Rory Newell. He had stolen his uncle’s RIB and disappeared during Daley’s first investigation in Kinloch. Daley had suspected that his links with drug dealers had been responsible for his disappearance then, and now he knew.

  The thought of the punishment dished out to Rory Newell made him retch again.

  ‘Aye, canna say I’ve seen that before,’ said Wattie, shaking his head. As he watched the stricken police officer retch again, others in the crowd added to the general murmur of agreement.

  8

  He pulled the car over in a lay-by about three miles outside Kinloch. His breath was heavy and he could feel beads of sweat making their way down his forehead. His mouth was dry, but with none of the bitter taste of stale alcohol that he had become so used to over the last few months. He inhaled deeply, desperately trying to stave off the panic he felt in his stomach, a feeling that had been steadily growing since the previous evening when his wife had told him that there was no way he was getting a drink; certainly not before the long drive he had in front of him early the next morning.

  He tried to compose himself by winding down the car window and taking in the warmth and scents of summer in Kintyre. He reasoned that there were much worse places in the world to start back at work. He took one last gasp of fresh air, wound up the window, turned up the air conditioning, then gunned the accelerator.

  Scott sighed as Bob Marley’s classic blared from the car stereo. ‘You got it wrang there, son. It was the deputy that took the bullet, no’ the sheriff,’ he whispered to himself.

 
; For Brian Scott, reality beckoned.

  *

  Gary Wilson’s lip curled in distaste as he took in the modern art that covered the walls in the office of the Minister for Rural Affairs, Food and the Environment. Forced to have some of the available catalogue of paintings on the wall of his own domain, he had opted for a photographic silhouette of the New York skyline, rather than this ridiculous tumble of swirls, geometric images, clashing colour and confusion.

  He wondered why someone like Elise Fordham would tolerate such rubbish. In his opinion, she was one of the party’s rising stars; politically aware, intelligent, tough and unflappable. She was not afraid to stand on toes, politically or literally, a quality no politician could possibly do without if they wanted to scale the ladder to success. To him, she most closely matched the First Minister in terms of political sure-footedness and the ability to crush opponents with incisive wit and withering put-downs, or to use that same quality to deflect criticism when the nonsense came from her own side.

  ‘Morning, Gary.’ Fordham swept in, a nervous political advisor in tow. ‘Make yourself useful and get me and Gary a drink. Coffee?’ She looked at Wilson with a smile, acknowledging his nod. ‘The usual for me, and no fuckin’ sugar this time!’ The thin young man in the cheap, ill-fitting suit almost bowed his way out of her presence as she closed the door behind him.

  Fordham spoke in much the same way she always had. She was from a tough, former mining village in the heart of Lanarkshire, and it showed: no airs, no graces, straight to the point. Despite this formidable exterior, in her mid thirties, with short dark hair, dark eyes and soft features, she was able to use her femininity to great advantage, should she want to. Only an eye as jaundiced as Wilson’s detected the hint of a double chin on her smooth round face, put there by hard work, long days and a poor, eat-on-the-run diet. Like Wilson, she was a former journalist; from his own paper, in fact. Unlike him, she was a graduate in the politically ubiquitous PPE: politics, philosophy and economics. Despite this, he still liked her and thanked the heavens that this growing crisis came within the remit of her ministry.

  ‘Right, Gary, down to business. This bastard Cudihey is going to be an embarrassment, right?’

  ‘Slightly more than that, it would appear,’ he replied, looking up at the ceiling. ‘There has already been an intervention from a third party purporting to be the local plod, but on examination nothing to do with them.’

  ‘What then, the press? If it’s anything to do with Paddy Sinclair at the Daily Shag, I’ll string the bastard up.’

  ‘That’s just it, Elise. It would appear not to be our friends from the fourth estate, either. I’m still investigating, but unless it’s a deep-cover job from the BBC or Channel 4, or some freelance nut-job, I’m sad to say that we have something else to worry about. I’ll have a more definitive answer for you by close of play today. There’s something about all this I don’t like, though.’

  Fordham stared at him blankly. He knew that, behind those dark eyes, she was already calculating the possible political consequences of the situation.

  ‘So, now the obvious question: who the fuck is it?’

  He told her about the impromptu interview of Kirsteen Lang, as well as an update regarding the spectacular suicide of Walter Cudihey, all of which she took in without demur, sitting quietly behind her desk.

  ‘Oh fuck!’ she said loudly when he had finished.

  ‘I see you have reached the same conclusion as me.’

  ‘Spooks?’

  ‘If my enquiries with the TV people come up with nowt, then I think we have to view that as an extremely likely possibility.’

  ‘Is that the same as a potentially verified outcome?’

  ‘No, but getting there,’ he replied, smiling at her contempt for political double-speak.

  ‘OK. If so, who? Not MI5, I hope?’

  ‘Too early to say. I’m going to have to drop everything until we get to the bottom of this. I’ll need full access to Cudihey’s personnel file, as well as Kirsteen Lang’s. Oh, and anything from the Whip’s book of the dark arts, too, regardless of how closely guarded it might be. I’m sure you can arrange that.’

  ‘If I can’t, I’m sure the First Minister can.’

  ‘Bit early to get them involved, don’t you think?’

  ‘Aye, maybe, Gary. But if you don’t come up with anything concrete in the next few hours, I’ll need to flag it up. You know how things are just now. We’re all on our toes in case the dirty-tricks brigade from Westminster show their faces and try and ruin the project.’

  ‘Project Thistle, by any chance?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call it that, Gary.’ She smiled.

  ‘Freedom, by any other name. Anyhow, I’ll leave all the funny handshakes and secret codes to you lot. Give me a couple of hours; at least we’ll know by then who we’re not dealing with.’

  ‘Aye, good man,’ she sighed. ‘And do me a favour – find out exactly what we have on the ground down in Kinloch. Politically and otherwise, if you know what I mean.’

  The door burst open to reveal a skinny young man in a bad suit holding three Styrofoam cups of coffee in two hands.

  ‘Sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I couldn’t knock because of these,’ he continued, holding up the beverages as evidence.

  ‘Arsehole,’ Wilson said, as he pushed past him and through the door. ‘And who said you could have a fuckin’ coffee?’

  Elise Fordham watched her young aide deposit the drinks onto her desk, then dismissed him. From the inside pocket of her tailored suit jacket, she removed a tiny key, then used it to unlock a small drawer in her desk. She retrieved a black diary from within, then reached into her handbag and, after some fumbling, produced a cheap mobile phone. She typed four capital letters, then sent the message to a number she had retrieved from the diary. The message read: M O F Z. She waited for it to send, then placed the diary and phone back into the drawer, which she locked.

  As she lifted the coffee to her lips, she was perturbed to note that her hand was trembling.

  9

  At nineteen, his mind should have been occupied by thoughts of girls, sex, study, work, friends, family, a drink down the pub, football, holidays, music, clothes; any manner of things. Instead, all that mattered for Malky Miller was his next fix, a new opportunity to stick a needle into one of his diminishing number of useable veins, and feel the chemically induced orgasm overtake his senses. Well, that, and money, the commodity that facilitated his habit.

  He’d had his first joint when he was in primary school; his father had been a user and his mother an alcoholic. He had grown up in Glasgow’s East End, in one of the city’s worst schemes; one blighted by violence, drugs and deprivation. Did citizens in the bohemian West End care that their fellow Glaswegians were dying of overdose, malnutrition, alcohol abuse, beatings, stabbings? Many of the middle class did their best to ignore these issues.

  In an effort to rid the city of some of these ‘problem’ families, a plan was hatched. Why subject these people to the high-rise horror of badly maintained multi-storey misery, with zero amenities and even less hope, when they could be miserable elsewhere? The answer was simple: relocation.

  Small towns on the edge of Scotland’s economy, where fishing, crofting, distilling, small-scale mining or ship building had once provided a good living, could be allowed to thrive again, this time as support networks for stricken fellow Scots. Hence, working on the principle that exposure to sea air and sound rural values, combined with a change of scene and distance from malevolent influences, could only be of benefit, many of the most troubled individuals Glasgow had to offer found themselves breathing in the tang of the ocean and taking in the views of green fields, dark hills and big skies.

  Sadly, instead of integrating their new inhabitants into the community, these towns and villages found themselves increasingly blighted by the same problems that had prompted this urban exodus in the first place. Doors once left unlocked were firmly bolted; the frie
ndly faces in the street turned into those of people the locals neither recognised nor liked the look of. The smart tenement flats that lined the main streets, where well-to-do merchants once brought up their families became dens where crime and depravity flourished, and from which only grasping landlords profited.

  Malky Miller was a fine example of this. He had been placed in ‘community care’ by social services when he was seventeen, then moved to Kinloch, where he could be more closely monitored by social workers and hopefully given a fresh start away from the influence of his troubled family. In his second week there, a friend of his had caught the bus from Glasgow and brought Malky his first haul of drugs to sell. Now, two years on, with many customers and much less danger than in the city, Malky had become one of Kinloch’s most affluent dealers.

  Today, he was going up a level; such was his success that he was being rewarded with a visit from the boss, or someone so close to the boss that it made no difference. He had tidied up his flat in anticipation. Consisting only of a living room with a curtained-off galley kitchen, a tiny toilet and shower room, and a bedroom just big enough to contain the double bed, this housekeeping hadn’t taken long. Sweaty, and a bit shaky after his exertions, he sat on his large recliner and stared at the huge flatscreen TV that dominated the room and was, apart from the Audi A3 parked down the street, one of the few trappings of his financial gain. Had the children of Glasgow’s deprived families been properly educated and mentored, some of them would undoubtedly have become captains of industry, such was their acumen for business. The ruthlessness and greed that drove Malky differed little from his peers working in financial services all over the world, though it was just possible that Malky was a more likeable person, a trait that made him good at selling.

  Fighting the desperate desire to shoot up – he wanted to be straight for his visitor – he sprang up from the recliner and walked across the room. In front of an old fireplace sat a three-bar electric fire which Malky reached behind to produce a black cloth bag. He looked into it and smiled. The heft of notes, drugs and requisite paraphernalia felt good in his hand; though not his only stash, this was his biggest. He checked them all, many times, every day, just to make sure they were there. He replaced the bag behind the fire, stood up, felt dizzy, then returned to the recliner as quickly as he could. He hoped they would come soon. He needed a fix.