Dark Suits and Sad Songs

by Denzil Meyrick

  ‘You guys,’ Fordham said, leaning across Wilson. ‘Lose the shades, eh.’ Looking unmoved by this instruction, the pair complied silently.

  ‘Arseholes,’ muttered Wilson, under his breath. ‘I take it the local cops know we’re coming?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Fordham confirmed. ‘Not that we’ll be in need of any support. It’s not as though we’ll be doing much politically, though no doubt we’ll have to make small talk with some local dignitaries, or the like; lunch with the Chief Superintendent. You know the score, Gary.’

  ‘Oh, I know the score,’ He shook his head. ‘I dread to think what passes for a dignitary way out here. The village oaf, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Now, now, all valued members of the electorate, and citizens of this fine country of ours.’

  ‘The former being of greatest concern to you, I would hazard.’

  ‘You’re very cynical, Gary. Has anyone ever told you that?’

  ‘Many times. Though mainly those who confuse cynicism with the exigencies of realpolitik.’

  A head poked in between the headrests in front of them. ‘Are you no’ that woman fae Edinburgh?’ asked a middle-aged man. ‘I know your face fae that programme on TV with thon baldy guy. Och, whoot’s its name?’

  ‘Question Time?’ asked Fordham brightly, displaying her winning political smile.

  ‘Nah, let me think.’ The man’s face was now wedged between the seats, forcing in his cheeks and puckering his mouth. ‘Was it no’ MasterChef, or maybe, Saturday Kitchen. Aye, one o’ the two.’

  ‘Er, no, I’m sorry. I’ve never appeared on either of these programmes,’ said Fordham, doing her best to end the conversation by purposefully looking away from the man and out of the window.

  ‘Is that a fact? And who might you be?’ the man asked, swivelling his eyes towards Wilson, whose abrupt answer was thankfully drowned out by the plane’s overly loud intercom.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you may be interested to know that we are flying over the south of the Isle of Arran where apparently, over the last few nights, lights in the sky have been spotted by a number of local fishermen. So keep your eyes peeled for little green men,’ said the captain, his tinny voice oozing sarcasm. ‘Back on this planet, we’ll be landing at Kinloch in just over twelve minutes. The weather there is as glorious as it was in Glasgow. Thank you for flying Scotia Airways.’

  ‘Did I really just hear that?’ said Wilson wearily. ‘I wonder what you’ve got us into, coming down here.’

  ‘We have to make the right noises about Cudihey; be seen to pay our respects. The guy worked in my department, and who knows why he decided to do what he did. It would appear heartless not to show face.’ She was whispering, anxious in case the man in front of them could overhear, even though he appeared to have lost interest and was sitting forward in his seat. ‘Hopefully, this will draw a line under it all.’

  ‘I wish I shared your confidence. In my experience it’s best to let sleeping – or indeed in this case, dead – dogs lie.’

  ‘There we are, back with the cynicism.’ Elise Fordham looked back to the blue sea. She remembered Walter Cudihey sitting in her office only days before he died. As hard as she tried to banish the memory, a dark shadow crossed her mind.

  Daley passed an image of the man in the CCTV footage to his colleagues in Interpol. They, no doubt, would try to match it up with thousands of similar images from all over Europe and beyond.

  He was anxious about the Taylor family; so anxious, in fact, that he’d placed a uniformed officer in the County Hotel to make sure nothing untoward happened to them. He was waiting for analysis of the family’s dinghy to confirm, or not, that Alice was correct, and the small inflatable boat had indeed been sunk by a gunshot.

  In his heart though, he felt he knew the answer already. He was sure the initial collision between the two boats had been an accident. The only explanation as to why this man, or those men, had returned, was to effect the elimination of somebody who could possibly identify one of them. If Alice’s theory was correct, they had come very close to succeeding.

  He had three bodies: one suicide, two brutal murders. Were these incidents connected? Had Walter Cudihey killed himself knowing that he was about to be murdered like the others? What, if anything, was the connection?

  There was a knock at his door and it swung open. John Donald stood in the doorway, grey and worn. Unusually, he was wearing a sweatshirt over a pair of jeans, he was unshaven and dark shadows circled his eyes.

  ‘Jim, sorry to interrupt,’ said Donald, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘Need you to do me a favour, actually.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Daley tried to work out the last time he had seen Donald without either his uniform or a suit on. ‘What can I help you with?’

  ‘You know we have the Minister for Rural Affairs arriving this morning. Well, I’m supposed to lunch with her but, as you can see, I’m in no state to do so. Must have picked up a bug or some damn thing, I feel awful.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m not sure how this involves me.’

  ‘I’d like you to attend the luncheon in my stead. It’s only for an hour or so. Headquarters are keen that someone of a senior rank is there; they can’t spare anyone else to come down at this late stage.’ Donald coughed, then held his stomach as though he felt sick.

  ‘OK. Though I’m reasonably stretched here myself. But tell me what the score is and I’ll do it.’ The resentment wasn’t lost on Donald.

  ‘Now, Jim, I’ve bolstered your investigation team considerably, plus you have resources from outwith our area to call on, should you need them. What’s an hour of your time?’ Clearly Donald had regained some of his composure. ‘The only place I could think of was the County. Oh, and Gary Wilson will be there. I’m sure you’ll enjoy seeing him again.’

  ‘Nothing would give me more joy, sir.’

  ‘You know the kind of thing, bit of chit-chat. Be sure to make reassuring noises about how well the new force is shaping up.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is it shaping up, sir?’

  ‘Of course it is. High time we rid ourselves of all that ridiculous Glasgow–Edinburgh rivalry. Best thing that’s ever happened.’

  ‘If you say so, sir,’ replied Daley, remembering Donald’s previously scathing views on the standard of any policing east of Motherwell. ‘What time will this lunch kick off?’

  ‘One o’clock. Inspector Layton, my aide, will accompany you. Please leave any matters pertaining to divisional, or Police Scotland, business to him.’

  ‘What can I talk about? The weather?’

  ‘Try not to be smart, Jim. It doesn’t suit you.’ Donald grimaced. ‘I’m afraid I have to get back to my hotel room.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll let you know how I get on.’

  ‘Yes, whatever,’ said Donald, clutching at his stomach again as he opened the door. He hesitated. ‘Wear a uniform, please.’ With that the door slammed.

  ‘Fuck,’ Daley swore to himself. ‘I don’t even know if my bloody uniform fits.’

  *

  As he was about to leave the office his phone rang. A rather hoity-toity official from the MOD was put through to Daley.

  ‘I’m Neil Samuel,’ the man said flatly. ‘I need to discuss an item that has come into my possession and of which you have a copy.’

  ‘Sorry? I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘I want you to destroy the copy of the map discovered on Walter Cudihey’s boat. It is of no consequence to your investigation, but it is of interest to us. I’d be obliged if you could accede to this immediately, Chief Inspector.’

  Daley was never at his best when demands were made of him so peremptorily. ‘Why has the MOD taken possession of evidence pertinent to the suicide of a member of the public? Walter Cudihey was not a member of the military, so everything discovered on his yacht is part of my investigation.’

  ‘DCI Daley, I had hoped that you would be reasonable about this. You wil
l be hearing from your superiors about this. Good day to you.’

  With that, the line went dead, leaving an exasperated Daley still holding on to the phone. He could see the map in his mind’s eye. Now there was no doubt: it did mean something and, far from destroying it, he was determined to find out what it meant. It would have to wait though – lunch called.

  Kirsteen Lang decided to walk the mile and a half to work in order to clear her head. Thankful that she had so far managed to avoid the taint of Walter Cudihey’s suicide, she had treated herself to a bottle of Chardonnay the previous evening. She was trying to walk off the empty calories as she strode through the crowd of early morning shoppers and tourists already thronging the busy Edinburgh thoroughfare. The sun was warm, and the smell of exhaust fumes and fast food overlaid the malty tang of brewing beer and a hint of the sea, all of which combined to produce the odour so redolent of the city.

  Her meeting with Gary Wilson had unnerved her, especially when it turned out that she had given a full, though less than frank, statement to a man who wasn’t the police officer she had been led to believe. She reasoned that she could hardly be blamed for this, a point of view shared even by Wilson, who had seemed much more perturbed by this than by Cudihey’s death.

  As she looked into a shop window in which expensive handbags were artfully arranged, her mind drifted to the previous evening. She had spent hours searching through her laptop, iPad and smartphone, making sure all traces of her dealings with Cudihey were erased. She’d even taken clandestine advice from a tech-savvy friend who instructed her as to how to erase these files so that their retrieval would be impossible, even for a forensic specialist.

  Kirsteen walked past a shop window displaying mobile phones of varying size and design. She paused; she had been considering upgrading her current model. It was then she felt her heart sink. Prior to having a contract phone, she had used a pay-as-you-go device, now consigned to the back of her bedside table drawer. Though it hadn’t been used for a long time, she knew some of the information held in its memory could prove damaging. She had to make a decision: if she ran back home she could remove the phone from the drawer, hide it on her person, then wipe its memory later. But to take this possibly incriminating device to her place of work, given the current circumstances, could potentially prove even more risky.

  She sighed, deciding that the possibility of her flat being searched was now a remote one. It was only extreme caution and a touch of paranoia that had pushed her to excise her old boss from her digital life. Thinking about it, she was sure that Wilson was more preoccupied with the bogus police officer, rather than bothering about a phone she hadn’t used in almost a year.

  Feeling brighter, she stepped out into the road to continue her walk to work, just as a white van rounded the corner sharply and at speed. The collision sent her body high into the air. Her bag slipped from her grasp, disgorging its contents over the road, as her body landed with a heavy thud on the bonnet of a parked car. Blood streamed from her nose and mouth onto the metallic silver paint. As the red stain began to taint the cascade of her blonde hair, a woman screamed and ran to help, but it was too late.

  In the distance, brakes screeched as a white van sped through the early morning traffic.

  20

  ‘Sir,’ shouted Rainsford, running across the car park. ‘Just received this email from Interpol, sir. I thought you would want to see it before you left.’

  The printout was three pages long and contained a number of images of varying quality. Daley quickly read the email.

  We have provisionally identified the image you sent us as that of Pavel Abdic, originally from Serbia. Via the Bosnian army, he became a mercenary, serving widely in European and Middle Eastern conflict zones. He was recorded as fighting on the Chechen side of their conflict with Russia, where he was captured by the Russian Armed Forces. In the second Chechen conflict he appeared to switch sides and worked in clandestine ops, with a number of associates, for the Russians.

  Since then, we have information that he and a number of others have been involved in the assassination of government officials, senior organised crime members, industrial leaders and members of the public in various parts of the world, including Israel, the USA, Russia, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong. The full list is long.

  Needless to say, this man is wanted in a number of countries, and is extremely dangerous.

  The identification level at the moment is at 68%.

  We are working to improve this figure and a list of main associates will follow.

  Daley looked at images of the man Interpol reckoned had been in Kinloch the day before. Some of the pictures were old, but he could definitely see the resemblance to the CCTV footage. But what would a man like that be doing in Kinloch? Why would anyone pay for a professional assassin to come here and kill drug dealers who, despite the police’s best efforts, were ten a penny? More questions he had no answer to.

  ‘Get a hold of Alice Taylor,’ he said to Rainsford. ‘But do it quietly. I don’t want to alarm her parents. See what she thinks of these. If there’s any more from Interpol, give me a bell, OK?’

  As Daley drove out of the car park, he had the uneasy feeling that no matter how challenging his problems over the last few days had been, they were only the tip of the iceberg.

  The stolen car with the altered number plate stopped in a lay-by, fringed with trees, beyond which the Atlantic broke lazily on a rocky beach. The man reached for his phone and made a call. He spoke briefly, his accent Eastern European. ‘Everything has been done as I ordered. I don’t care what you think, it is unimportant. You have done as you were asked. Be ready in case I need more help.’ He hung up.

  Daley was relieved, but only slightly. He had managed to fasten the button of his uniform trousers, but only just. He marvelled at the fact that though his face was noticeably thinner, his gut continued to grow. The new tunic, displaying a Chief Inspector’s insignia on his epaulettes, felt entirely foreign. He stood in front of the mirror and placed the hat with its braided visor on his head. The man that looked back at him bore very little resemblance to the young cop who had first put on a uniform more than a quarter of a century before. The clothes had changed almost as much as his body; he longed for the days of the old tunic jacket, which would have covered some of the bulges now on display through the tight T-shirt that now passed for the top half of his uniform.

  He looked at his watch and sighed; he had twenty minutes to get to the County and meet the Minister. He was surprised by a knock at the door.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said Layton. He was tall, thin and looked unnaturally grey. ‘I know we have a luncheon to attend, but I need to speak with you, and this would appear to be the perfect opportunity.’

  ‘Come in,’ replied Daley, inviting the Inspector into his home. ‘If this is the speech about what I can and can’t say in front of Elise Fordham, don’t worry. I’ve already had it.’

  ‘No. It’s something much more important.’ Layton sat down on the sofa opposite Daley. ‘What I am about to tell to you is top secret, with all of the usual restrictions and consequences that normally apply.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I know that you have your misgivings about Chief Superintendent Donald. These have been noted and acted upon. I have been seconded from Special Branch to shadow Mr Donald in order to try and ascertain just what, if anything, is going on.’

  ‘Really? I mean, yes,’ responded Daley, put off his stride by Layton’s directness. ‘I’m sure my superior is involved with things he shouldn’t be. I assumed it was just political manoeuvring but I get the feeling now that it’s something more.’

  ‘I can’t divulge any of our suspicions, or indeed findings, at the moment, DCI Daley. Suffice it to say, our investigations are ongoing.’

  Daley remained silent for a few moments, desperately trying to take in what he’d just been told; an internal police investigation was one thing, Special Branch was another beast altogether. ‘So
why the promotion? He’s in charge of a whole district of this new force now; damn near an old-fashioned county Chief Constable.’

  ‘I must remind you, officially, that John Donald – at the moment – continues to have the total support of senior officers within the new force. He is a talented executive officer. Unofficially, I don’t need to tell you about the art of entrapment, DCI Daley, and of the inherent dangers involved in such an operation. Without going into too much detail, it was felt that, unencumbered by superiors, Donald would be freer to operate in the way he so chose. If his subsequent activity turns out to be felonious, and our suspicions are confirmed, so much the better.’ He paused, looking meaningfully at Daley. ‘If not, we shut up shop and leave the Chief Super to his stellar career. I know this will be a surprise to you, DCI Daley, but perhaps not a shock. In any event, I know you are aware that ACC Manion is involved in an internal investigation. He is also working alongside us, and so I advise that if you have any questions, they be addressed directly to him.’

  Layton was right; he was surprised that this was happening, but not shocked that something was at last being done.

  ‘So what now? Who knows about this operation?’

  ‘Need-to-know basis and very senior executive officers only.’

  ‘Why me? I’m his subordinate, but I’m hardly at the cutting edge of his empire down here in the sticks.’

  ‘It was deemed that you needed to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m afraid this is the last of your questions I’m able to answer. However, I can reveal that we have reason to believe that our suspect’s activities are centred in some way on Kinloch. Again, questions that must be asked of ACC Manion.’

  Daley was lost for words. He didn’t know what shocked him more; the fact that the Chief Superintendent could be up to something criminal in this remote part of Scotland, or hearing him coolly described as a suspect.

  ‘What now? I mean, how do we proceed?’

  ‘As normal. I’ll inform you of any changes to the landscape if and when they occur.’