The only exterior hint that the years were encroaching was in his hands. Wallace’s hands had always fascinated Burns. They were huge, blunt things, the knuckles on the right gnarled and bunched – “from ma years in the police boxing team,” Wallace would say with a wink as he rubbed them on cold days – and Burns had always wondered how intimidating seeing those hands would have been to anyone brought into Craigmillar Police Station. The impression they made on Burns was the same now – blunt instruments that were designed only to deliver pain – but he could see that the fingers were starting to curl and warp gently, the first flush of arthritis starting to remould them like the naked branches of a dying tree.
“So,” Wallace said, leaning over the table and grabbing his pint, “Third Degree Burns. And a DCI now, no less. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Burns smiled, let the nickname pass. He hated it, but he was damned if he was going to let John Wallace see that. The truth was he wasn’t sure what he wanted. He had arranged to meet John at his home in Eskbank, a small town off the road from Edinburgh to the Borders. John had jumped at the chance, but instantly suggested a change of location. “I’ll meet you at the pub. Just drive up from Dalkeith, you cannae miss it, it’s on the roundabout. It’ll save you the pain of Anne’s home baking, and give me an excuse to get out for a bit.”
They sat at a small table in a bay window, the décor screaming ‘pub chain straining for olde worlde charm and authenticity’ and missing by a mile. John had ordered the first round, insisted Burns had “a proper drink with an old man”.
Burns reached for his “proper drink” now. A pint of 80 Shilling. He sipped, arranging the words in his mind, then put the pint back on the table and pushed it away subtly, hoping John didn’t notice. Truth was, Burns wasn’t much of a beer drinker, preferring a glass of red with Carol at the end of a long day.
“Well, John,” he said, “you heard about Paul Redmonds?”
“Aye,” Wallace said, a glint of something hungry and eager in his eyes. “Terrible business. Dinnae get me wrong, Paul was an arrogant wee shite, especially in the later years, but he didn’t deserve that. You getting anywhere with it?”
Burns shook his head. He wasn’t – and that was part of the reason he was here. Everything so far was a dead end. No obvious financial problems, no enemies anyone could or would identify, nothing untoward at all. And nothing, other than the Falcon’s Rest raid, to link him to Dessie Banks. And there was no way that was strong enough to follow at the moment. It wasn’t the message that the Chief Constable would want to hear, so Burns had made himself busy out of the office for as long as he could. Delaying the inevitable bollocking.
“Not really, and that’s sort of why I’m here. We spoke to Alicia Leonard today…”
“Ah, Alicia,” Wallace said, then took a gulp from his pint that made half of it disappear. “And how is the Ice Queen?”
Burns smiled, thinking back to his interview with Leonard. The cold, glinting chip of distain when he had pushed her on the last time she had seen Paul Redmonds.
“I get the impression she doesn’t like being questioned, by anyone about anything,” Burns admitted.
John nodded. “Aye, you’ve got that right. Alicia always knew exactly where she wanted to go and who she needed to know to get there. She was always convinced that she was right too. The annoying fucking thing was that she usually was. Probably explains how she got to where she is now.”
Burns nodded. Made sense. All the positive discrimination and slogans about equality didn’t do much against decades of ingrained sexism. It would have taken a hell of a lot of determination to claw up the ranks the way Leonard had, especially back then.
“So, John, she mentioned that she was at your leaving do a few months ago. But how did you know her, and Redmonds, anyway?”
Wallace drained his pint, started work on the Glenfiddich he had bought to keep it company. “We worked together at St Leonards,” he said. “Before your time. That’s where she and Paul met actually, when they were assigned to CID together. Caused a fair stooshie at the time too.”
“Oh? How?” Burns reached for his pint in spite of himself.
John drained his short, nodded to the bar. Message received.
“Well, when they first met, Paul was seeing someone else. A wee PC called…” – Wallace paused, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and clicked his tongue, as though he could call the name to him – “ah! Ritchie. That was it. Jane Ritchie. Nice wee girl. Great legs, filthy sense of humour. Anyway, things were pretty serious between her and Paul, they were more or less living together at the time. But along comes Alicia, decides Paul would be better off with her, and that’s that. Rumour was they were shagging on the job – not that everyone hasn’t – but right under Jane’s nose. And they roped in the duty sergeant – not me, the other one – to organise her shifts to keep her out of the way. Anyway, when Jane found out, she hit the roof. Made a big stink, threatened to go to the brass with it.”
Burns gave a quizzical look as the barman deposited another pint and short in front of John. He didn’t present a bill and John didn’t offer to pay.
“Well,” he said after he had taken a sip of his fresh pint, “there was a big thing against officers having relationships back then, especially senior officers and subordinates. Didnae mean shit, of course, there were enough affairs going on to keep the plotlines of Dynasty going for a few years, but the brass were keen to be seen to be taking a hard line, so…”
“So they were looking to make an example of Paul and his relationship with Jane?”
“Aye, maybe,” John agreed. “Didnae matter in the end, though. She transferred, Glasgow I think, with a nice wee promotion. And Paul and Alicia got married not long after. Then she went to Perth and he stayed in town.”
Burns scribbled a few notes, then flicked back to his record of the interview with Alicia Leonard. “When you saw them both at your retirement do, how were they?”
John paused for a moment. “Aye, fine. From what I remember. But I was indulging in the generosity of my fellow officers at this point, Jason, so I wasnae exactly at my sharpest. But it was a nice night. We’d been for dinner, then headed for the Guildford Bar, took over a couple of tables at the back.” He nodded, gaze growing wistful. “It was nice of them to make the effort to come.”
“Effort?” Burns asked.
“Aye,” Wallace confirmed. His pint seemed to be evaporating in the warmth of the pub. “Ack, you know what it’s like. People get promoted or move patches. Like I said, Alicia went to Perth after St Leonards. I went to Craigmillar. People drift apart. I hadnae seen either of them for years by the time I retired. The odd Christmas and birthday card, aye, and Paul was always on the blower if he needed a little local knowledge, but we hadn’t spent any real time together for years. But that’s what you do when another copper retires, isn’t it? Make the effort. I’ll make the effort for you when the time comes, Jason.”
Burns smiled, returned John’s small toast with his glass. “Thanks, but I’ve got a few years in me yet,” he said. “So the leaving night, best you can remember, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the two of them being together. They didn’t quarrel, no awkwardness?”
John looked for the answer at the bottom of his whisky glass. Tried to get a clearer view by draining half of it. “Not that I remember,” he said. “She came in first, planted a kiss on my cheek. Insisted on buying me a drink.”
“And how long was she there before Paul arrived?”
Wallace’s brow furrowed. “Not long,” he said. “Actually, not long at all. Maybe five minutes. I remember they met at the bar.”
“Really? Why?” Remembering Alicia’s words now: When I saw Paul there, I paid my respects to John and left. I didn’t speak to Paul. Frankly, didn’t want to.
“The usual shite with people these days,” he said. “They were both on
their bloody phones, staring at the screens. Inches from each other and in totally different worlds.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s why they broke up in the first place.”
Burns ignored the temptation to follow that, stuck with the matter at hand. Didn’t want the whisky catching up with John’s memory and blurring it before he had finished with him. “And did they speak, John?”
He paused again, looked at his whisky. Raised the glass, stopped as the memory came to him. “No,” he said slowly. “Not really. She came back with a couple of drinks, whisky for me, a vodka for her. Was just making the toast when Paul made an arse of himself at the bar.”
Burns sat up. “How did he make himself look like an arse, John?”
Wallace’s face split into a smile that showed off teeth too white and perfect to be anything other than false. “Och, the usual shite. Again, something you lot do. He was standing at the bar, Mr Super Cool in his expensive suit, when he caught my eye and gave the usual gesture.” Wallace raised his hand, holding the fingers open as if he was holding an invisible pint, and tilted it to his lips. You drinking? the gesture said.
“Anyway, as he did, he just about took the eye oot of this wee lassie that was standing next to him. She jumped back, yelped, caused a bit of a scene. Paul sorted it out, then he looked back up at gave me that fucking stupid Yankee thumbs-up.”
Burns felt something caress the back of his neck. Cold and electric. “Yankee thumbs-up? What do you mean?”
John lifted his hand again, closed it into a fist then popped up his thumb and extended his pinkie before shaking his hand from side to side.
“You know, like the Hawaiians do?” he said.
Burns nodded agreement. “And Alicia was standing beside you the entire time?” he asked, eyes not leaving Wallace’s hand.
“Aye, she laughed at him, took her vodka in a shot, then left. Why?”
“Nothing,” Burns said. Thinking back to his early teenager years. He knew the sign, had been introduced to it by too many episodes of Magnum PI. He had been obsessed by that show, by the sun and the easy lifestyle and the friendships the characters shared in Hawaii, a world away from his own grey upbringing in Broxburn. The hand sign was the shaka, a common enough greeting. But he also knew the sign was common in Scotland, and worldwide, for something else. Something that made no sense if Alicia Leonard’s statement was to be believed.
Call me.
30
Doug sat at a bar in the departure lounge of Edinburgh Airport with a double whisky – which cost him almost as much as a half-bottle from the local supermarket would have – sitting untouched in front of him.
The call to Hal had been quick and fairly vague. He’d said only that he was working on a story, and needed a laptop and some files looked at pretty quickly, wondered if Colin could help? Hal had agreed on Colin’s behalf, setting only two conditions: that Doug flew down to London that afternoon to see them, and that he was staying over.
“We can have dinner,” Hal said. “And you can read Jennifer The Heroic Tale of The Red Giant at bedtime for a bloody change.”
Doug smiled into the phone. The Heroic Tale was his one and only attempt at fiction writing, a story he had come up with for Hal and Colin’s daughter when they had been driving across the Forth Road Bridge, heading for a hotel Hal was consulting with as a favour to Doug on the Isle of Skye. As they had driven, the thumps and rattles of the car over the expansion joints on the bridge had scared Jennifer, her dark eyes growing wide and wet as her porcelain-fine skin paled. Doug had seen the rising terror in her face – wondered if the poor kid had heard the stories about the bridge being shut a few months before because of welds failing. She was only three, but she was bright. Just like her dads.
So Doug had told her a story, that the thumps and bumps were only the Heroic Giant that looked after the bridge, tapping on the underside of the bridge to tell Jennifer he was there, looking after her. She had smiled, seemingly happy, then asked for Doug to tell her more.
And so The Heroic Tale of the Red Giant was born. Doug had written the whole thing up, surprising himself with how much he had enjoyed it, then emailed it to Hal and Colin. Colin had taken the copy and typeset it, designed a cover then bound it. It was only fifteen pages long, but it was enough for Jennifer, who insisted on it being read to her every night.
After hanging up on Hal, he had logged on and bought a ticket to London City, slapping it on his credit card and vowing to worry about it later. It hadn’t taken him long to pack: a change of clothes, Redmonds’ laptop and the flash drive safely in his pocket. He only felt a glimmer of guilt for lying to Susie about having a safe place for them. After all, whoever was after the flash drive and computer wasn’t going to know he was heading to London. And besides, if whoever had broken into his flat was going to try again, he wanted to be the target, not Susie. He owed her that much at least.
He phoned Becky and told her where he was going, keeping the details sketchy, his earlier words to Susie rattling around his head as he spoke. This is between us. I’ll tell Becky at the same time you tell Burns.
Driving out to the airport, he had dumped the car in the secure overnight parking, another credit card hit to worry about later, leaving his own laptop in Redmonds’ bag in the boot of the car. He didn’t want it falling into the hands of whoever was after him, reasoned that they would have to be pretty stupid to try to break into his car in a secure parking zone with cameras bristling from every wall.
He had made it through security without incident, his heart in his throat as he put the flash drive into the small plastic tray that rattled through the X-ray machine, then headed to the bar, buying the whisky before he had even thought about it.
He reached for the glass. Stopped. Thought of Susie. I need you. Not the booze-soaked, self-pitying twat you’ve become. Pushed the glass away. But not too far.
He decided to bring his thoughts into focus, put what he knew in order. Pulled his notepad from his bag and started filling a page with all the names and places he knew. It was an old trick, put the puzzle down on page in front of you, then reorder the pieces until they started making sense. Problem was, the more he looked at it, the less sense it made to Doug. He wrote down Redmonds, circled it. Then wrote Falcon’s Rest and Dessie Banks, connecting the three bubbles with lines, a question mark above the line between Banks and Redmonds.
But that was the only explanation for all this, wasn’t it? Redmonds had found out that Doug was poking around the brothel raid story, and his possible connection to the brothel’s ultimate owner, Dessie Banks. He had used the image of Susie to try and blackmail him into killing the story, bargaining Susie’s dignity against his desire to stay out of the headlines.
Drew another question mark on the page. Thought. There was that feeling that he had seen something but failed to recognise its importance, that the picture was trying to tell him something else. He closed his eyes, pushed aside the flush of shame and guilty surge of electricity through his groin as he recalled the image from the flash drive. Remembered zooming into it, the harsh shattered star of the flash Redmonds had used in the mirror, the table with the discarded bottle of champagne, the glasses, the TV showing cheap hotel porn beside it.
Porn…
Doug bit on his lip, bore down as though it would burst and the answer would bleed into his mouth. There was something…
He exhaled in frustration, glanced back towards the whisky. Tore his eyes away and looked back at his page of notes. At Redmonds’ name. Drew another line, wrote Where was he? and circled it three times.
According to the police reports, Redmonds had been found shortly before 4am. But Doug had left him sometime after just after 2am. So where had he been? The drive back to Trinity, especially at that time of night, should have taken twenty-five minutes at most, meaning there was at least an hour and a half unaccounted for. So where had he gone? Who had he seen? And why had w
hoever it was killed him? What was so important about the flash drive or the laptop?
Doug snatched for his phone, hoping action would calm the raging torrent of questions in his mind. He dialled Rab MacFarlane’s mobile, was rewarded with a click as he was transferred straight to voicemail. Great. More frustration.
He searched out the departures board that was hanging above the bar, saw that his flight had been given a gate and packed up. Turned and walked away, trying not to think about the abandoned whisky. Headed for the duty free shop and an overly-expensive bottle of perfume for Becky on his way to the gate.
He didn’t notice the squat, wide man who watched him from the bar, light grey suit straining at his shoulders and gut. Didn’t see the picture of Doug he had on his mobile, the way he glanced between it and Doug as he walked away. The man who had been dropped at the airport half an hour ago by a jumped-up little speedfreak who liked to drive too fast and thought traffic lights were advisory rather than mandatory. The man who had taken a call from Mark an hour ago, and been told all about Doug’s travel plans.
The man who had delivered Mr James’ message the night before.
Vic McBride.
31
The police morgue was a small, ugly knot of pebbledash and concrete that glowered over the Cowgate. With its flat roof and dull beige walls, it could almost be mistaken for a garage or a storage facility; the only signs that it was used for something else being the gratings on the windows, the security gate on the steps and the rising bollards on the drive that let vehicles in or out.
Susie sat in Dr Stephen Williams’ office, which was little more than a small anteroom just off one of the main medical bays, listening to a kettle rumble to the boil. She always found it difficult to reconcile the ordered perfection of the office with the man who used it. Williams always looked like he had forgotten something important, and was on the verge of remembering it. His dark hair was beating a hasty retreat from his forehead, regrouping around his ears and sideburns in untidy wisps and swirls. He was tall to the point of gangly, a matchstick version of a man who looked like he had been flayed of any trace of muscle. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, untucked and rumpled, which exposed upper arms and biceps almost as flat and slender as Susie’s wrists. Yet she remembered watching Williams work on more than one corpse, sinews straining as he used the rib splitters to ratchet open a chest cavity, the snapping, rending sounds echoing off the cold sterile walls of the morgue like gunshots. Work like that took strength. And resolve.
All the Devils Page 13
