Colin and Hal listened quietly, eyes growing wide as he spoke. When he had finished, he paused, studied the stem of his wine glass. Thin and fragile. He knew the feeling.
“So that’s it,” he said softly. “That’s the story. I understand I’m asking you to get into some murky shit, and I’m sorry for that. If you don’t want to get involved, no problem, but I just… just didn’t know who else to ask.”
Colin and Hal exchanged a brief glance, an entire conversation seeming to occur in the silence. Then Colin nodded slightly, leaned forward and eased the laptop bag forward.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s see what we’ve got. You got that flash drive there, Doug?”
Doug fished it out of the pocket of his jeans, and Colin reached over the table for it, eyes holding Doug’s. “Well, I’ll say this, Doug, knowing you is never dull. Don’t know how much help I can be, but let’s see. I’m going to take this to my study, that okay with you?”
Doug nodded. “No problem.”
“Good,” Colin said. He turned to Hal. “You two have a drink and a chat, I’ll have a look at all this, see what I can find out, okay?”
Hal nodded, squeezed Colin’s leg. “Thanks,” he said.
“Oh, don’t thank me,” Colin said, eyes dancing with mischief. “Thank Wordsworth over there. After all, he’s going to owe us another bedtime story for Jennifer after this.”
• • •
“So Doug,” Hal said softly, sipping on his whisky, “just what the hell is going on with you and Susie?”
Doug coughed, his own whisky scalding the back of his throat. “Wha…?” he gasped, blinking away the tears. “Whadya mean?”
Hal cocked his head to the side, giving Doug a “you-know-better-than-that” look. “Seriously, Doug? I have to lay it out for you? So much for the trained investigative journalist, the keen reader of people.”
“Hal, honestly, I don’t know what you mean,” Doug said. But he did. Hal and Colin seemed set on their view that Doug and Susie shared an unspoken attraction, that they deserved to be together. They never showed it when they had met Becky on their last trip to Edinburgh, but Doug could tell it was another silent conversation they had between glances.
She doesn’t fit, those shared looks said. She doesn’t belong.
Hal got up, paced across the room to the mantelpiece. Picked up a picture of the four of them – Doug, Hal, Colin and Jennifer – that they had taken on Skye. He studied it for a moment, as if he was looking for how to say what he wanted to in it, then put it down and turned to Doug. He looked like he should have been in a whisky advert.
“Doug, can I be blunt with you?”
“Course,” Doug said, a vague snarl of unease penetrating the whisky fug.
“We’re worried about you, Doug. You’ve lost weight, and the way you’re grimacing every time you use that hand tells me it’s not getting much better. And yet…”
Doug shifted in his seat. “And yet what?”
“And yet, as fucked up as you are, you beat a man half to death when he showed you a picture that would compromise Susie. You get her to lie to the police, you withhold evidence, put the Trib into so much shit that they’re going to think they’re in a manure factory… and for what? To protect a friend?”
Doug heard Redmonds’ voice in his ear. Mewling, pleading. Stop, please, I was wrong, I know I was wrong. Just stop. Remembered the rage at that moment, the way it coursed through him like molten steel, cauterising, galvanising, washing away every other thought and feeling but one.
Revenge.
“Look, Hal, if this is another one of your misguided attempts to get me and Susie together…”
Hal waved the notion away. “No, it’s not, Doug. Really, it isn’t. But you’re in some serious shit here, and the only way you’re going to get through it is to be honest with yourself. Why are you doing this? To protect a friend? Or was there something about that picture in particular that bothered you?”
“So what are you saying?” Doug asked, looking up at Hal. “That I was, what? Jealous or something?”
Hal shrugged. “That’s for you to decide. I’m just saying it’s not you, Doug. You’re not a violent guy. You’re not the type to hit first and ask questions later. I know that. So I’m asking what drove this.” He paused for a beat. “Say it had been Rebecca instead of Susie, would you have reacted the same way?”
Doug opened his mouth. Of course I would, he was going to say. What, you think I wouldn’t fly off the handle if that scumbag had shown me a naked picture of Becky instead of Susie?
Instead, he closed his mouth. He didn’t know what to say. Stared up at Hal, the question hanging between them.
What would he have done?
They were still sitting in the silence when Colin poked his head around the door, an uncertain look on his pale face.
“Find something?” Hal asked, taking a half step towards him.
“Not sure,” he said, walking to the dining room table and laying the laptop and flash drive down. “Come here, I’ll show you what I mean.”
Doug got up, his legs numb pillars of concrete, and shuffled across to Colin, suddenly not sure if he wanted to know what he had found.
38
James stepped out into the night quietly, glanced around. He was at the bottom of an old stone stairway, the lips of the steps rounded and smoothed off by years of use. They were, he thought with a smile, a real trip hazard. Someone could take a nasty tumble down those stairs, cracking their head open with a deep, ripe crunch as they landed at the bottom in a crumpled, broken heap.
Now wouldn’t that be a shame?
He made sure the door was closed securely then ran his gaze down his front. No blood, no telltale rips or tears, no outward signs of anything untoward. Perfect. Flicking up the collar of his jacket, he took the stairs two at a time, then emerged onto the street. No one was around. At this time of night, the offices were closed and the street was little more than a thoroughfare.
Perfect again.
Tucking his hands into his pockets, he started walking, deciding to savour the night. It was cold and clear, the moon a shard of bone that glowed in the dark sky.
He should, he thought, be angry with himself. This had been foolish, irresponsible. What if he had been recognised? He was under no illusions that he was some kind of celebrity, but he was self-aware enough to recognise that he did have a public profile of sorts, especially now. And if he had been seen…
No. There was no point in torturing himself with possibilities. What was done was done and he had emerged unscathed, his anonymity intact. It was everything he had hoped it would be, and more. The perfect counterpoint to a day that was replete with frustrations and setbacks. A day that, briefly, made him question whether he was losing his touch.
Mark had done well in tracking McGregor so quickly, proof if it was needed that the message he had Vic deliver had served its purpose. But then Vic had failed to act before McGregor had made it to London, and his rendezvous with Hal Damon.
James rolled the name around in his mind. Damon’s involvement in this, however tangential, was a problem, but he couldn’t see how he fit into the picture. Unless, of course, McGregor had decided to pack it all in and flee to the City, taking a job with his friend in PR.
If only it was that simple.
Damon was connected to the wrong people. Any action against him would bring undue attention from some of his clients. He had, according to what James had been able to dig up, done good work in the past for the Scottish Tories on a delicate story, earning the respect of just the type of people James wanted to keep in the dark. So it was a problem, but a manageable one. As long as Vic didn’t make it worse.
He thought again of his earlier call with Vic. The insolent tone, the defiance, and he felt his irritation stretch its wings, fan the embers of rage that he had so recently and
pleasurably quelled.
He sighed, picking up his pace. This was the problem with indulging himself: he developed a taste for it all too quickly. Like a drinker who says he’ll “only have the one” and then finishes half the bottle before he’s aware of it, James was acutely aware that he had an addiction. But he also knew how to control it, channel it.
Most of the time.
He thought back to his last meeting. The look of shock and confusion when he had pounced; the sweet symphony of bones grinding together under his blows; the smell of blood and adrenalin a bittersweet thrill in his nostrils; the hot, fevered feel of flesh beneath his fingers as he gouged and pulled and tore. It was a pity he had to use the latex gloves, but caution was always preferable. And besides, he thought, remembering the broken, blood-soaked mess he had left behind him, the results had been most satisfactory.
He closed his hand around the blade in his pocket, remembered how it had caught the light, the blade seeming to glow as he swung it. The pulsing arc of blood it had unleashed, the grunt of pain and shock, the spatter as it hit the wall. He smiled, tightening his grip on the handle as he decided on a destination and picked his way through the cattle that shared the pavement with him.
The night was young. He had released his tensions and frustrations in the only way he knew. There were other problems that demanded his attention – Damon, Vic, McGregor – and he would solve them.
Every single one.
39
“So,” Colin said, absently running his finger over the trackpad of the laptop, “I had a look at this thing, like you said. And…” – he laid the flash drive in the small gutter between the keyboard and the screen – “this.”
Doug swallowed, heard his throat click. It was as if the flash drive had a magnetic pull, dragging his eyes to it, forcing him to see it, remember… He coughed, blinked. Hal shot him a look and Doug shook his head. I’m fine, the gesture said. He wished he meant it. “Well,” he said, voice little more than a whisper, “what did you find?”
“Nothing at first,” Colin said, picking up the flash drive and plugging it in. “Firstly, this is nothing more than it appears to be. A basic flash drive with just one file on it. Doug, do you mind if I…?”
Doug remembered his promise to Susie, not to look at the image again. He paused. Remembered his conversation with Hal only moments ago.
“Is it important?” he asked, his voice flat.
Something like sympathy flitted across Colin’s face. “Yeah, I think it might be. It’ll only be a minute, Doug, I promise. But I think you need to understand this.”
It felt to Doug as if spiders were crawling around his stomach, caressing his guts with slender, skittering legs. He jerked his head in a nod, barely felt Hal’s arm slide round his shoulders and squeeze. Colin nodded and double-clicked on the icon, the image jumping to life on the screen. Doug heard Hal take a breath then coughed.
“Oh, Susie. Jesus,” he whispered.
Colin quickly zoomed into the image, scrolling away from anything that would embarrass Susie. “Okay,” he said, the stress in his voice twisting his attempt at relaxed informality into something that made Doug grind his teeth. “So what we’ve got here is a jpeg. Pretty standard, not very high res, obviously taken by an amateur.” He scrolled around the image, past the TV where the porn played, zooming in further to the flash bouncing off the mirror.
Colin pointed at the screen. “See this? That’s the camera that took the picture.” He traced a small rectangle around a section of the screen. “And I mean camera, not smartphone. By the looks of it, that’s a small digital camera – you know, the flat ones with the retractable lenses.”
“Okay,” Doug said, eyes glued to the screen, unable to really follow what Colin was saying, or make connections himself.
“So,” Colin said slowly, shooting a concerned glance at Hal, “that’s the start of the bad news.”
Doug felt as though he had been slapped. Bad news? What? “Bad news?”
“Well, yeah,” Colin said. “Those cameras don’t use flash drives like this, they use SD memory cards – you know, the things that look a little like a bank card? Wider. Flatter. Which means –”
“Which means,” Doug said, finally seeing what Colin was getting at with horrific clarity, “that this isn’t the original jpeg. That Redmonds copied this file onto the flash drive from another device. Meaning there’s another copy of this out there somewhere. Along with fuck knows what else.” He took a breath. Glanced down at his glass. Empty. “Fuck,” he said.
Colin nodded. “Sorry, Doug,” was all he said, hating how inadequate it sounded.
“And there’s nothing else on the laptop, nothing linked to this? I couldn’t find anything more than a couple of spreadsheets and a Word file with an abortion of a memoir on it. You find anything at all?”
Colin shut the image down and Doug stared at the screen a moment longer, feeling as if he was still missing something. Something in plain sight, something his stupid booze-soaked brain wasn’t able to connect with another fact stored away deep in his brain…
“See, that’s where none of this makes sense,” Colin said. “This Mac is top of the range, only came out six months ago. And there’s nothing on it, so you would think it’s fairly new, right?”
“Right,” Doug said absently, his mind still gnawing on the memory of the image. Something…
“That’s what I thought,” Colin said, fingers pecking away at keys and bringing up another menu. “But then I looked at this.” He gestured to the display on the screen, a small icon showing a battery with two coloured bars sitting beside it. “This is the battery life indicator for the computer. It shows the battery has been heavily used, which indicates that the computer has been fairly consistently powered up with a lot of active programs for long periods since it was bought. For only six months old, tops, there’s a lot of degradation to the battery condition, more than I would expect for a laptop of this age. And yet, for all that –”
“There’s nothing on the laptop,” Doug said, feeling something in the back of his head spark to life. “So what the hell has he been using it for?”
“Ah,” Colin said, a small, proud smile lighting up his face, “that’s where it gets really interesting. I dug down a little further, and found the IP log files. It shows that this laptop has been connecting to the Internet fairly regularly. What it doesn’t show is where it’s being connected to. And when you go into the web browser history, there’s just the usual stuff, a handful of everyday websites.”
“But what does it all mean?” Hal asked. “A seriously used laptop that’s empty. A naked picture taken on a digital camera and copied to a flash drive. Records of serious Internet use but hardly any indication of what for in the browser history? What…?”
Colin shrugged, looked to Doug. “Doug, you said that this is all there was, just the laptop and the flash drive. Anything else? Another hard disk maybe, another flash drive?”
Doug thought back to Redmonds’ laptop bag, which was now sitting in the boot of his car at Edinburgh Airport. He had searched it the first night, after Susie left. Found nothing but a bunch of business cards. Nothing else.
He looked at the glass in his hand, felt a stab of shame. Hal’s words: The only way you’re going to get through this is to be honest with yourself. How sober had he been when he searched the bag? How drunk? Could he have missed something? He mashed his fingers into his eyes, pushing hard enough to send bright spots of light exploding across his field of vision. Nothing. A wasted trip. A waste of time he didn’t have, a …
Wait a minute.
Time.
He snapped his eyes open, glared at the screen. “Open up the image again, will you?”
Colin looked at him, shared another glance with Hal. “You sure you want to?”
“Yes!” Doug snapped. Held up a hand. “Sorry, Colin. Yes. Please. It’s
important.”
Colin turned to the laptop and brought the image back up. Doug hauled his eyes away from Susie, forced himself to instead concentrate on the bottom right-hand corner of the image. The corner where a time stamp glowed on the screen in neon red.
02.37am.
He closed his eyes, willing his mind into action. Looking back in his thoughts. Time. That time. Something about it that he…
“Fuck,” he said after a moment, realisation shuddering through him. How could he have been so fucking blind? So stupid? It was, after all, how he had found out about Susie and Redmonds in the first place. Going through the hotel records from the night of the party, he had seen that a bottle of champagne and an “entertainment event”, which was hotel code for a porn film, had been charged to Susie’s room at 11.24pm. So unless it was Horny Olympians Go For The All-Night Fuckathon Record they had been watching, the film couldn’t have still been playing more than two hours later.
Which meant the porn on the TV screen was something else. But what?
He gestured to the screen in the corner, not looking at the main image. “Can you enhance that?” he said.
Colin squinted at the screen. Grunted. “Maybe, though it could take a while,” he said, more to himself than Doug or Hal. “But why? Is it important what fuckfest he was watching?”
“Could be,” Doug said, feeling the first shards of sobriety peek through the fog in his mind for the first time in entirely too long. “And can you have another look at the laptop, see if you can find anything else?”
“I can,” Colin said, “but I’m not sure there’s much more to find. It’s like I said, Doug, it’s as if there’s something missing. You find that, maybe I can do something more.”
All the Devils Page 16
