All the Devils

by Neil Broadfoot

  Colin closed the image. Doug stood for a moment, not breathing, eyes locked on the screen. Files. Screens and screens of them. Movies and images and audio files. All carefully catalogued, the folder names making Doug’s skin crawl.

  Dom. Anal. Snuff. Kids. Four legs good.

  And down in the left-hand corner, tucked away from the somehow banal horror of the descriptions Doug had read, a window that made his blood run cold. One line of text that made everything fall into place at once.

  31 guests. 7 online. All the Devils are here. Welcome back, Paul.

  “Copy it,” Doug said suddenly, lunging forward and placing a hand on Colin’s shoulder. “Copy as much as you can, as quickly as you can.”

  Colin nodded, understanding. Fingers blurring across the keyboard. “On it,” he said.

  Susie blinked at Doug. “Doug, what is all this? And what –”

  “It’s a file-sharing site,” Doug said. “Porn, from the mundane to the extreme. Looks like a darkweb site, you know, one of those hidden sites where like-minded weirdos can get together and enjoy their perversions.”

  He nodded to the guest counter at the bottom of the screen. “I’m sorry, Susie, but Redmonds almost certainly put the pic of you on here…” His voice trailed off and he glanced at the files in front of him.

  Files.

  “Hal, open up the flash drive, get me the filename of the pic Susie was in, will you?” He felt her gaze on him, hard and unflinching. Ignored it. Didn’t have time. “Colin, can you search for that filename, and anything associated?”

  “I can try,” Colin said, the warning in his voice all too clear. Doug understood. He could find the files, but this was only a directory, not the home location. He couldn’t delete them. Not from here.

  Doug nodded. “Get as much as you can as quick as you can,” he said.

  “Why the rush?” Susie asked, sounding dazed. “If we’ve got access, can’t we take our time, go through whatever this is methodically, try to figure out what the fuck is going on?”

  Doug felt as though the ground beneath his feet had been electrified. He could feel the seconds ticking away as they spoke. He shook his head. “Time’s one thing we don’t have,” he said, gesturing back to the screen and reading out the message. “‘All the Devils are here. Welcome back, Paul.’”

  He searched her eyes, saw understanding bleed into them slowly. “That’s right. We just logged into a closed porn-sharing site with at least thirty-one members, according to that. And we used a dead man’s ID. Sooner or later someone’s going to get interested in that. They killed Redmonds and sent Vic McBride to stop us getting this far. Who or what do you think they’ll send next?”

  52

  To Eddie, the sound from the other room was like the electronic cheep from an alarm clock: strident, insistent, annoying. But from the way Mark Hayes reacted when it started, it could have been the two-minute warning klaxon for the nuclear apocalypse. He stopped talking, halfway through a rant about “data packaging and multi-phase encryption”, which sounded to Eddie like English that had been dumped into a blender. Hayes’ mouth hung open in a slack-jawed gape of surprise, blue eyes growing wide and terrified behind his glasses as he stared past Eddie towards the living room door.

  Eddie glanced over his shoulder, towards the source of the alarm, half-expecting to see the Grim Reaper standing in the doorway. Nothing. He looked back at Mark.

  “Everything alright, Mr Hayes?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual. The last thing this guy needed was more stress.

  “Fine, fine,” Hayes said, head darting to face Eddie then back to the door in a jerky, halting spasm. He twitched his face into that awful not-smile of his again, teeth glistening with spittle. “Sorry,” he said, trying and failing to force nonchalance into his voice. “It’s work. Alarm tells me when a program is running. Would you excuse me for a moment?”

  “No problem,” Eddie said, glancing down at his notes. Things were close to wrapping up anyway.

  Hayes nodded and bustled out of the living room. Eddie heard another door being opened then pushed shut – the closed door he had seen adjacent to the living room. Must be a home office.

  He looked back down at his notes, disappointed. There was nothing here beyond basic background: they’d worked together on various things, most recently on a government project. Yes, they were friends, socialising outside of work. No, Hayes couldn’t think of any reason why someone would want Brian dead. A case of mistaken identity? A robbery gone wrong?

  Eddie sighed. Nothing useful. And he wasn’t looking forward to telling Susie that. But what had he expected, really? For Mark to open the door, bloodied knife in one hand, signed confession in the other? Dream on, Eddie, he thought to himself. No, this was going to take time. Patience. Real police w…

  “Ah, SHIT!” the cry echoed through the flat, only slightly muffled by the closed door and the wall between the spare room and the living room. Eddie suppressed a small smile and stood up, taking a step into the hall.

  “Mr Hayes?” he called to the closed door. “Mark? Everything okay in there?”

  Mark’s voice was a wavering screech, tears and hysteria fighting for supremacy. “Yeah, yeah, fine,” he called back. “Just a small work problem, nothing I can’t… Oh, mother-fucker!”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the sudden, brittle sound of plastic snapping. The shock of something bouncing off the wall reverberated around the flat. Eddie took a step forward, hammered the door with the flat of his hand then grabbed the door handle. “Mark? Mark? What’s going on? If you don’t answer me now, I’ll –”

  “Fucking bastard!” Mark shouted, the hysteria poking through his voice like coastal rocks at low tide. There was another crash, the almost musical sound of something shattering.

  Right. Enough.

  Eddie turned the door handle and barged into the room. Mark whirled away from the desk on the opposite wall, hands clamped to his head, eyes glittering and rimmed with tears. A laptop sat at his feet, broken like a child’s discarded toy. In the corner, a tower that looked like an oversized hard disk gave an asthmatic grunt, as though struggling to breathe past the boot-sized dent that had been put in its high-gloss casing.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here, Mark?” Eddie asked, eyes strobing across the room, taking it all in. He saw the shards of plastic from the ruined laptop. They looked sharp. And lethal. The last thing he wanted was Mark getting his hands on one of them and some sudden ideas.

  Mark looked at him, uncomprehending, eyes searching Eddie’s face for an answer he knew he wouldn’t find. He shook his head, small hands bunching in his hair, pulling clumps of it painfully taut. The thin tendons in his arms bulged and flexed with the effort.

  “He warned me,” he said, shaking his head faster and faster.

  “Who warned you, Mark?” Eddie asked. “About what? Tell me what the problem is and maybe –”

  “I did what he asked,” Mark said suddenly, looking down at the ruined laptop. “Took all the precautions, put the safeties in place. But I didn’t expect, didn’t know he’d know how to use the key, let alone access the site. How could I? How could I?”

  Eddie felt his head spin. What the fuck was going on?

  “Mark, look, I –”

  “And now he’s going to be so angry. So, so angry.” Tears were streaming down Mark’s face now, his face draining of colour, leaving nothing but slack, doughy flesh. “He told me what would happen if I made any more mistakes. Used Brian. Made sure I got the message. But now. Now…” His voice trailed off as he focused on a horror only he could see.

  Eddie felt as though he had just been slapped. Wait. What?

  “Mark, what did you just say? Brian? What’s Brian got to do with this? Did he give you a message? Something to do with your work?” He nodded towards the ruined laptop.

  Mark laughed,
a high, wavering yelp, the sound of an adult laughing at an uncomprehending child. “No, no, no,” he said. “Don’t you see? Brian was the message. For me. To show me what would happen if I did anything wrong. And I did. Fuck, I did…”

  Eddie took another tentative step forward. He had to calm this guy down, get him to tell him what he knew.

  “Look, Mark, I’m here to help, okay? I don’t know what’s going on, but whoever is angry with you, they’re not going to hurt you when I’m here, okay? So just take it one step at a time, start from the beginning, and tell me. You mentioned Brian. What does he have to do with all this? Is it connected to his death? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Mark smiled again, the closest to genuine Eddie had seen. It made his skin crawl. “You don’t understand, do you?” he said. “He doesn’t care about you, you’re nothing to him. You think you can protect me, keep me safe? What, the same way Brian was? Or that wanker Redmonds? No one is safe from him, no one.”

  Eddie’s mind was a pile-up of thoughts and ideas. Jesus Christ. Redmonds. Brian. What the fuck did this guy know, and who was he so scared of? What the fuck had he stumbled on to here?

  “Mark, please. Take a breath. I want to help. And I promise I’ll protect you. But first, you have to tell me what’s going on. What has all this got to do with Brian and Paul Redmonds? And who are you afraid is going to hurt you?”

  Mark seemed to consider him for a moment then looked down at the laptop. Eddie braced himself to lunge, convinced Mark was about to try for one of the shards of plastic and use it. On whom, he wasn’t sure. But then he seemed to sag and he staggered back, resting his butt awkwardly on the edge of the desk. He pushed his glasses up his face, took a hitching breath and rubbed at his eyes. Then in a dull, dead tone, he started talking.

  And as he did, two thoughts occurred to Eddie at once. The first was that he needed to call Susie as soon as he could.

  The second was that Burns had been right all along.

  53

  The tobacco was bitter and cloying in his mouth, the effort of chewing doing nothing to ease the pulsing headache that throbbed like a discordant soundtrack to his thoughts. After reviewing what he had found on the Leonards and deciding he had no option but to interview them again, Burns’ day had quickly descended into what an old boss of his would have termed a “total fucking fuckado”.

  Before he had managed to make it out of the office, Rebecca had called asking – no, actually, almost pleading – for any update on the Redmonds and Coulter murders. He couldn’t blame her, after the car-crash that the Chief’s TV presser had been the night before, he understood all too well the need for Police Scotland to be seen as on the front foot and driving the investigations forward. Problem was, there wasn’t much more to be done. The CCTV review was ongoing, Drummond and King were following up leads on Coulter, including who he was working with at the time he died. Standard police work. Routine, methodical. Unsexy.

  And exactly what the press didn’t need to hear.

  Eventually they had worked out a line that could be given to the press that didn’t overegg the investigations but gave the impression of steady progress being made. After promising Rebecca he would update her with anything he heard from either team, Burns set about trying to arrange a second interview with Alicia Leonard about the night she saw Redmonds at John Wallace’s leaving do. However, getting hold of Alicia Leonard had proved almost impossible. Her phone was diverting straight to voicemail, and a quick call to the Police Board secretariat showed she was in meetings with the Chief for most of the day.

  Perfect.

  Giving up on Alicia, Burns focused on Michael Leonard. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he could glean from asking him about the 2008 paedophile case in Glenview – and if he had met Alicia then, despite saying he only met her later – but it seemed worth pursuing.

  He called the contact number on the card Leonard had given him, got put through to his secretary at Paradigm Investment Solutions. She explained in a breathless, West Coast lilt that “Mr Leonard was in a series of meetings with clients for most of the morning and afternoon”, leaving Burns in no doubt that she had much better things to do with her day than spend time talking to the police.

  Burns had clamped down on his mouthful of tobacco, his thoughts as bitter as the taste flooding his mouth. “It is,” he hissed, “somewhat important. And related to an ongoing murder investigation. Perhaps you could see if you could find some time in his diary this afternoon. Either at his offices or here at the station, I really don’t mind.”

  He left the threat hanging on the line, heard a sigh he knew was accompanied by a pout and then the not-so-gentle clatter of a keyboard.

  “I can give you a slot at 4.30pm here on George Street,” she said eventually, sounding as if she was doing Burns the world’s greatest favour.

  He bit back the urge just to tell her to forget it – that he would send a patrol car for Mr Leonard and have him driven to the station – and instead thanked her for her time. He spent an hour going through paperwork then headed out, wanting to be away from the station and possible calls from Rebecca. He needed time to think.

  He walked up from Gayfield into town, cutting through the back of St James Centre and then through Multrees Walk, past all the designer shops and boutiques that Carol secretly loved. He stopped outside the Mulberry store, thinking, as he always did, that he should just go in, put a bag on his credit card and make Carol’s day.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t deserved it, putting up with him all these years.

  He was just trying to figure out which bag he should buy when his mobile chirped in his pocket. He fumbled it out of his pocket as one of the shop assistants watched him a little too closely through the window.

  “Drummond,” he said as he hit Answer, “what’s up?”

  “Sir, ah, there’s been some developments in the Coulter case.” She quickly filled him in on Eddie’s encounter with Mark Hayes, the destroyed computer and the story he had told him.

  “Tell me King has him at Gayfield,” Burns said.

  “Yes, sir, he has. Eddie’s getting a formal statement from Hayes now. Though I’m not sure how much he’ll repeat on the record, Eddie said he was absolutely terrified in the flat.”

  “Fuck him,” Burns growled. “He should have thought about that before he got into this.” He glanced at his watch, made a quick calculation. “I can be back at Gayfield in fifteen minutes, I assume I can meet you and King there?”

  Susie took a breath on the line. “Actually, no, sir. I was hoping we could meet up first. I’ve got something else as well, something that may be connected to this. And the Redmonds case.”

  Burns blinked for a moment, trying to take in what Drummond had just told him. “What?” he whispered. He was suddenly very aware that he was standing on a busy shopping street. “Redmonds? What the fuck has any of this, or you, got to do with the Redmonds case? I thought I told you to stay away from that, Drummond. What part of that didn’t you get?”

  “Sir, please,” she said, her voice hardening, “I didn’t go looking for this, but it… well, it dropped in my lap. And I think it’s connected to Redmonds’ murder, and what happened to Brian Coulter.”

  Burns turned what Drummond had told him over in his mind, trying to see it as one picture. It was no good, he couldn’t get the pieces of the puzzle to slot together. He turned back and started walking up the street, taking a right into an alley. He didn’t want to talk about this in the open. “Go on then,” he said, “enthrall me, Drummond. What have you got?”

  “Not on the phone,” she said, defiance in her voice. “Sir, I’m really sorry, but you’ve got to trust me on this. I think I can connect the Coulter murder to Redmonds’ death, and even what happened to Rab MacFarlane. But I can’t tell you over the phone, or at Gayfield, could you meet me?”

  Burns felt the anger roil in
him. Enough of this shit. She had called him out of the blue, telling him she was up to her ears in an investigation that he had explicitly warned her away from. And now she was playing a game of cat and mouse with him? Forget the fact that she was contravening a whole manual’s worth of regulations, he was through with her fucking him around.

  But then again… If there was something that linked all this together, wasn’t it worth giving her a little latitude? He cursed under his breath. Why the fuck did Susie Drummond have to be such an intuitive copper? If she was shit at her job he could find a reason to get rid of her. Yet here she was, again, offering him a lead on two major cases. A lead that, as usual, would probably get messy for them all.

  “Okay,” he said, looking up at the grey, mesh-covered front of an old 1970s office block that was being demolished, “tell me where you are. But I swear, Drummond, if this is a waste of time, you’ll be directing traffic by the end of the day.”

  Susie paused. He heard a click on the line as she swallowed, took a steadying breath. Then she told him where they should meet. And as she did, Burns was suddenly seized by the urge to wade into the building site and tear the office block in front of him down with his bare hands, one brick at a time.

  • • •

  The buzzer to Doug’s flat sounded twenty-five minutes later. Susie exchanged a brief glance with Doug, who was sitting on the sofa in front of Redmonds’ laptop. He gave her a brief nod and, again, the magnitude of what she was about to do hit her. It was like a crushing weight bearing down on her, crippling, buckling. But what choice did she have? Both she and Doug knew it was the only way to keep both of them in the clear, Colin and Hal already being sent off to enjoy a daughter-free stay in Edinburgh with promises that they would be kept out of it.