by Tony Black
Henderson slotted in the first of the three cards he had taken from Crawley and withdrew the maximum limit, then repeated the action twice more. He felt a compulsion to kiss the cash as he slotted it into his inside pocket, but he resisted; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. As he headed back to the car he looked up to the darkening sky and shook his head. He’d had a result, all he had to do now was hold his nerve and make the payment on his debt.
Henderson knew Boaby Stevens holed up in a pub in Newington called the Wheatsheaf; he turned the engine over, released the clutch and started out along Nicolson Street. As he drove, he went over the words he would use as he strolled into the pub: ‘Hello, Mr Stevens, I believe you sent a messenger out my way.’ He smiled to himself, imagined the look on Shaky’s face as he counted out the money. ‘Well, I couldn’t have you thinking Neil Henderson doesn’t pay his debts… And so, here you are.’ He laughed now; the springs in the driver’s seat started to judder. He was going to show them — he wasn’t paying the full amount but he’d get it. He’d have the debt cleared, and be back on his feet. It was all working out.
‘Nice work, Hendy… Fucking nice work,’ he mouthed to himself as he drove.
At the box junction, he flicked on the blinkers, turned left and then left again on his way to the Wheatsheaf. The sky had darkened more now; it looked like rain as he pulled up on the double yellows outside the pub and killed the engine. A white van passed by; its headlights washed a pale glow over the road surface as Henderson stepped onto the windy street and trailed the paving flags to the pub’s entrance.
Chapter 31
DI Rob Brennan made his way down the corridor towards Incident Room One. He got as far as the coffee machine before his legs started to feel heavy, his feet dragging on the industrial carpet tiles, and then his knees locked. The DI stalled where he stood, drew a deep breath and checked his watch face. There was still time to call a press conference and get the Sloans on board, he hoped, but what were the chances the Sloans would be keen to front-up a plea on television for help to find their daughter’s killer? It was one thing to talk to the press in your own front room, it was something altogether different to sit in a television studio under the spotlights and face a pack of hungry hacks. Brennan also knew from experience that very few relatives of victims were ever keen to repeat the experience once they’d spoken to the press. What had seemed like a good idea, like a closure, seemed only to open the wound wider once it was over.
The DI pinned back his shoulders, forced himself to take the first step towards the incident room. His feet still dragged, but his heart was by far the heaviest load he carried. Brennan knew he had taken an almighty chance on the Chief Super accepting his word and failing to check the veracity of his press conference claim. If he had, Brennan knew he could well be looking at another enforced leave. The thought spun around inside his mind as he walked, each dizzying revolution reminding him how much he had gambled. Is that what it had come to now, thought Brennan, gambling with his career? There had been a time when the job was all, everything; now it had been reduced to a spin of a roulette wheel. He didn’t know quite when, or how, he had reached this new low but he didn’t like it. He was changing inside, his every perception was being challenged. Everything he thought he had once held fast to — his job, his marriage, his sense of himself — was in flux. He wondered how long he could go on balancing so many misconceptions. He felt lost to himself, confused. The only constant he clung to was his sense of justice; Brennan needed to find justice for those girls that had been murdered. They were young girls, not even old enough to have reached their prime; they were barely more than children. And they had been slain, brutally; their corpses dropped in a field. Not even buried or hidden, just dumped. It was as if the killer was taunting the force; taunting him.
Inside Incident Room One, DS Stevie McGuire rose from his desk in the middle of the room, nodded to Brennan and moved out to meet him. As he edged aside, his foot caught the cable of a telephone on his desk, making it jump. McGuire stalled, turned and disentangled himself; he was free of the cable as Brennan drew beside him.
‘Boss…’ said McGuire.
‘What is it, Stevie?’
The DS put his hands on his hips, made a poor attempt at a smile. ‘I was just going to ask you that.’
‘Later, Stevie.’ Brennan took a step to the side, started to walk down the centre of the two rows of desks that divided the room. His stride was lengthened as he approached DI Jim Gallagher — he was hunched over a blue folder, making jottings in a notebook. ‘Jim, where did you get with the gymnastics lead?’ said Brennan.
The DI looked up, his eyebrows made a dart in the middle of his forehead. His hair had been scraped back tight on his head, accentuating his male pattern baldness. ‘Lead?… I don’t know if I’d be using so strong a term as that, sir.’
Brennan felt the blood surge in him, let rip. ‘Don’t fuck me about, Jim… I want to know how far you’ve got, not dance around the houses with you.’
Gallagher lowered his head, creased the rolls of flesh into his neck. He put down his pen, slowly locked his fingers together. His gaze seemed to intensify as he spoke, ‘I’ve looked into it; there were four identifiable names that could have had contact with Lindsey Sloan
… Three of them were already interviewed by Collins, and those all came up blank.’
‘And the fourth?’ Brennan snapped.
‘On holiday… As of today, it’s end of term.’ Gallagher presented the fact like a justification.
Brennan turned his head, looked down the room; the place had fallen into silence. His face creased like he was staring at the sun as he called out, ‘Seems to be a distinct lack of activity around here!’
A rustle of papers, bustle of bodies on the move. The photocopier started to noisily draw paper from the tray. A filing cabinet drawer opened. Brennan turned back to Gallagher, ‘What about cross-referencing with the Fiona Gow case?’
‘They were different schools,’ he said, looking down to his desk and turning a page inside the blue folder, ‘the Sloan girl was… Edinburgh High and Fiona Gow was Portobello Academy.’
Brennan watched the DI’s movements, let him settle again behind his desk and then he withdrew a hand from his pocket, held it out to Gallagher with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘Your point being?’
Gallagher shifted in his seat, let the page he was holding fall back to the folder. His words came delicately balanced on the back of a sigh, ‘I don’t see the two schools coming into contact… Five years apart as well. It’s not like the boys and their footy teams, it’s gymnastics.’
‘So there was no inter-school competition?’ said Brennan, ‘No regional or district contest?’
Gallagher wiped his mouth, ‘I’d have to look into it, it’s a lot to check though, sir… five years of it.’
‘Check it. If those lassies shared a changing room, I want to know about it. If they had an away day to the Commie Pool, I want to know about it. If they had sprained ankles and wore the same make of fucking bandages, I want to know about it. Am I making myself clear enough, Jim? Am I setting it out for you in the right language or would you like me to relay it through a bullhorn or a fucking loud speaker for you?’
Brennan’s voice had risen above the clatter of the office once again; he felt vaguely aware of eyes burning into the back of his head; DS Stevie McGuire drew up to his side. ‘Sir, can I have a word?’
Gallagher sat impassively. A fresh line of sweat had formed above his top lip, his eyes still burned into Brennan.
‘What is it, Stevie?’ He could tell the DS was trying to distract him, calm him down and persuade him to leave off Gallagher. There was little chance of that; Brennan had decided DI Jim Gallagher was going to be made to regret disrupting his investigation. He had compounded the pressure on the team and Brennan was going to make sure he returned the compliment with redoubled force.
‘It might be better if we…’ McGuire pointed to the glassed-off a
rea at the end of Incident Room One. He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially.
Brennan tutted, turned away from him and marched down the room towards his office. He wrenched the handle and pushed the door open; it swung back in a wide arc as McGuire followed in behind him; he side-stepped the door, grabbed the handle and then closed it gently.
‘Make it snappy, Stevie,’ said Brennan. ‘I’ve got a stack of things we need to be getting on with and this case isn’t going to solve itself.’
McGuire took two steps forward, hooked a thumb in his trouser pocket. His voice sounded flat, ‘I just took a call there from a Martin Gow… Fiona Gow’s father.’
Brennan felt a twitch kick in above his eyebrow. ‘And?’
McGuire unhooked his thumb, ran the fingers of his hand through his hair. ‘There’s some article in the News and…’
Brennan cut in, ‘I know, Stevie, I know all about the fucking News article.’
McGuire’s tone pitched up a notch, he spoke faster. ‘Well, you’ll be aware then that it mentions certain aspects of the case that, generally speaking, we’d have liked to have kept quiet about.’
‘No shit.’ Brennan removed a packet of Embassy Regal from his jacket, withdrew a cigarette and placed it between his fingers. The movement comforted him, he felt his pulse decrease slightly as he touched the smooth surface. ‘Look, what did Mr Gow say, Stevie?’
DS McGuire puffed his cheeks, squinted towards the window. ‘He wanted to speak to the officer in charge, I came to look for you but you were in with Benny and… Well, I headed him off at the pass.’
Brennan touched his forehead, the filter tip of the unlit cigarette pressed against his brows. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, that’s all we need.’
‘But…’
Brennan dropped his hand, looked at McGuire. ‘There’s a but?’
‘I’m afraid so… He wants to come and speak to you. As soon as possible.’ The DS reached into his shirt pocket, removed a yellow Post-it note and handed it to Brennan, said, ‘Here’s his number, he’s waiting for your call… Says he’s happy to come in to the station when you’re free.’
‘Right, thanks…’
‘I thought perhaps I should have handballed it to Jim.’
Brennan pocketed the number, ‘No chance.’ He pointed the cigarette like a blade at McGuire, ‘Jim is on a strictly needs to know basis… Needs to know fuck all, that is, unless I say otherwise.’
McGuire rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Message received and understood, sir.’
Brennan tucked the cigarette behind his ear, ‘Look, Stevie, you talk to Mr Gow, tell him we’re exploring links to the Sloan killing… But be careful, eh, and get him in for interviews with the squad.’ The DI started to do up his tie. His expression said he had moved on from the last topic of conversation. ‘I need you to do something else for me.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Get onto the press office and tell them to contact all media — especially the television studios — and tell them I’m fronting a press conference downstairs tomorrow morning… That should give them enough time to get us on the evening news slot.’
‘We’re going public already?’ McGuire’s voice dipped again.
‘We’ve no choice, the News beat us to it.’ Brennan brushed down the shoulders of his jacket, ‘We can maybe turn this around, though, make it work for us.’
McGuire looked doubtful, thinning his eyes and pressing out his lower lip like a petulant child. ‘We’ve never done well with the media before, boss.’
Brennan nodded, straightened his cuffs and headed for the door. ‘You can say that again. Look, it’s not the way I’d like to have played it, Stevie, but we’ve no choice. And it’s not like we’ve got leads coming out of our ears.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Brennan grabbed the door handle, held it steady as he spoke, ‘But remember, keep this out of Benny’s earshot…’
‘He doesn’t know?… You’ll have to tell him.’
Brennan shook his head now, ‘No, Stevie, he knows. He just thinks this was a fait accompli some time ago.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Good. It’s probably best you don’t. And, don’t forget to let the press office know that I am fronting this up… I don’t want fucking Gallagher anywhere near those cameras, don’t even want him in the room with them.’
McGuire smiled, ‘You media whore.’
‘No, Stevie, I don’t want him sticking his size tens in and tipping the press off to the links with the Fiona Gow case, that would be all we need — a serial killer frenzy on our hands and a baying mob of hacks following our every move.’
‘Got you.’ McGuire watched Brennan open the door, step through. ‘Are you heading out, sir?’
‘Well observed, Detective… I’m off to see the Sloans.’
Chapter 32
DI Rob Brennan thought the world was cracked, fragmenting. He felt the age he lived in had grown confused and uncertain. The world no longer knew right from wrong. It confused profits with rewards and seemed unsure of the value of anything. As he drove towards the Sloans’ home in Pilrig his mind thrashed between the case and more petty concerns. He thought about the way the Chief Super had cautioned him — not for his conduct on the case but for his financial mismanagement of the force’s resources. It was insane: he knew you could not put a price on policing the streets. You could not put a price on finding the killer who had left the cold bodies of Fiona Gow and Lindsey Sloan in a Straiton field. He shook his head, wondered how far off a privatised police force was. They had put the prisons in the hands of big business — and the court transport — was a private force much closer now? Nothing was beyond the scope of the bean counters, he surmised.
Brennan tilted with the sweep of the car as he overtook a double-decker bus with an advertisement for a new reality show on its side. He realised he no longer knew what a good television programme was. Or a good book. A movie or a piece of music. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d engaged with mass culture. It was for other people, alien to him; it seemed to him like nobody got Rob Brennan any more. He didn’t fit the unthinking mould: they were all waiting to be told their tastes, spoon fed.
He turned on the car radio, a saccharine pop song burst from the speakers and assaulted his eardrums; he turned it off, sneered into the windscreen.
‘Fuck’s sake.’
Where were the true artists, thought Brennan, the people to make sense of this mess? If a fifteen-year-old singer with a side sweep could shift records, it meant all now — but it meant nothing — where were the arbiters? Had they gone too? If they had gone — those point-men for the human race — then the rest of us weren’t far behind. No one stood up any more to say we had all lost our way; we had supplanted our souls with rhinestone or dust or paste — anything vacuous and empty, anything worthless, meaningless.
Brennan felt like the only one who cared; he was old enough to remember a different way, a different world. Was he simply being nostalgic? he wondered. Had it really been that much better to hear a song he’d enjoyed on the radio had reached number one on Top of the Pops? Did it mean anything? It was just another fond memory from his youth that triggered deeper memories — reminded him that those times were now gone, passed, and would not be coming back. Was it further evidence of his growing discontent? Brennan knew that the world he had dwelt in as a younger man had vanished and the promise it offered had never materialised. He felt let down, duped; and every reminder of the fact dug at his battered heart.
The mobile phone on the passenger seat beside him started to ring; he picked it up. The caller ID said Joyce. He flicked on the blinkers, pulled into the side of the road.
Brennan took a deep breath before he answered, ‘Hello, Joyce.’
She started on him immediately, ‘That was some trick to pull.’ Her voice was high, forceful. She had taken time to let her wrath simmer. ‘I mean, to drag your daughter out of school is one thing, but to not even tell me, to
leave me waiting at home… Wondering where in the name of Christ she was.’
‘Shut up, Joyce.’
There was a single second of silence, then indignation bit once more, ‘What did you say to me?’
Brennan answered calmly, he let the flat tone of his voice lead her opinion more than his words. ‘I think you heard, I think you’re being unfair, and I think you know it.’
Her teeth clacked on the other end of the line, ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘Neither do I… did you just call to bawl me out?’ Brennan could tell from the tone of his wife’s voice that she had no intention of making a valid point about him collecting Sophie from school. She was not concerned about where she had been or whom she was with; Joyce had called to vent unspoken frustrations. She wanted to tell him that she was the one who had decamped to the moral high ground, she was the one who stayed home, looked after their daughter. He, by contrast, had to be reminded he was the adulterer, not fit to remain under their roof. That was her message, however she attempted to relay it.
‘She went straight to her room and stayed there all night, never spoke a word. Do you realise the psychological damage you could have done to our daughter?’
Brennan tutted into the phone, it came out as a more guttural noise than he intended, but he wasn’t entirely dissatisfied with the effect. ‘Jesus Christ, woman… Will you listen to yourself? I took my daughter for coffee, one coffee and I delivered her to the door.’ He paused, ‘And, I have to say, she was in fine form when I left her…’
