Susie straightened up, shot a look at Burns, who was grimacing at the effort of controlling Alicia as she bucked and thrashed in his arms.
“Call it in, will you?” he said over her bobbing head, barely avoiding being butted in the nose. “And for fuck’s sake, let Rebecca know what’s going on. Someone’s going to have to brief the Chief, and it’s not going to be me.”
55
Doug pulled into the car park at the Omni Centre just down from Princes Street, cutting across Leith Street and up into town. He walked briskly, watching for a small man in a grey suit who might want to finish their earlier conversation. But there was no sign of him, which didn’t totally surprise Doug. If he was right, Vic McBride would have bigger problems to deal with now.
It hadn’t taken him long to find what he was looking for in the copied files Colin had lifted from the Devils website. It was just a matter of knowing where to look, and who to focus on. He had started searching the moment Burns and Susie had left the flat, feeling only a momentary pang of guilt. He didn’t give a fuck about lying to Burns – especially after the way he had treated him and Susie, even though they had effectively connected the dots for him. But it troubled him that he was doing something that could land Susie even further in the shit.
But he had to know. After everything that had happened, everything he had done, the need ached almost as badly as his wounded arm.
The Paradigm offices were based in an imposing Victorian building, the ornate stonework framed by a glass frontage that housed a reception area and what looked like a VIP lounge. In the centre of the atrium was a circular reception desk with a petite woman with hair so blonde it could only have come from a bottle. He asked for Michael Leonard, watched her gaze dance across his face and clothes as she tried to understand what a casually dressed, rumpled man like him wanted in this land of corporate suits and watches that cost more than cars, then she got busy with the keyboard. Doug smiled as he saw the surprise peek through her boredom – yes, Mr Leonard was expecting him.
He was given a pass and told to head for the elevator behind the security doors. After a short ride up, the elevator doors slid open, and Doug was confronted by what could have been a clone for the receptionist downstairs. She had the same bottle-blonde hair, perfect make-up and an expression so bored she could have been anesthetised. She led him down a long, deep-carpeted corridor to a set of dark oak double doors, knocked, then ushered him in.
Michael Leonard stood up from behind his desk, behind which a floor-to-ceiling window gave a spectacular view across the top of George Street and back to the jagged silhouette of the Castle and the Old Town. “Mr McGregor,” he said, sticking out his hand for Doug as he closed in on him. “Michael Leonard. Have to say, I was slightly taken aback by your call. You said it was something to do with Alicia and Paul Redmonds?”
Doug returned the handshake, tried to read Leonard’s eyes behind his designer glasses. He wasn’t giving much away, but Doug could see the set of his jaw, felt the heat in his handshake. All his years of experience at interviewing people told him one thing: Leonard was rattled.
And if Doug was right, it was about to get a lot worse for him.
Leonard nodded towards a chair at the other side of his desk and Doug took a seat. He waited for Leonard to take his own seat, let the silence drag out just long enough for it to feel uncomfortable.
“Thanks for seeing me at such short notice, Mr Leonard,” he said. “As I said on the phone, this isn’t for publication, it’s purely background on the story I’m doing relating to Paul Redmonds’ death.”
Leonard nodded gravely, glasses catching the light. “Terrible thing,” he said, “but I’m not sure what I can tell you, Mr McGregor. I didn’t really know Paul Redmonds. Alicia and I have already told the police everything we knew. I’m not sure what else I can –”
“You can start by telling me how long you’ve been running the Devils site, Michael,” Doug said.
Leonard sat back suddenly in his chair, eyes growing wide. He placed his hands on the desk, as though steadying himself. “What?” he whispered. “What do you…?”
Doug reached into his bag and pulled out a loose sheaf of print-outs. “It’s all here,” he said. “See, once I had the access to the site, it was easy enough to find that chat room and pull up the transcripts. Well, easy if you know people who can do that sort of thing. Like a couple of friends of mine, and someone you know. Mark Hayes. You do know him, don’t you, Michael?”
“Why yes, of course I do, he worked for the Docking Station, a graphic design company we invested in a few years ago. But why…?”
Doug nodded. He already knew as much; a quick trawl through Paradigm’s financial records and a visit to the Companies House website had told him that. Paradigm had loaned start-up capital to the Docking Station and, in return, Paradigm staff had been appointed to the Docking Station board, with a certain Michael James Leonard listed as a non-executive director.
“Is that where you met Mark? Spotted his potential? I’ve had a wee look through the Devils site – seems you have some rather eclectic tastes, Mr Leonard. Might explain why you were okay with your wife shagging her ex after you two met in Glenview. But then, I suppose it makes sense. You saw a business opportunity, to make perversion pay. So you had Mark set up the site, then got your playmates to sign up.” Doug raised his eyebrows. “Talk about screwing cash out of people.”
Leonard shook his head, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed. He closed his eyes for a second, pushed his glasses up and massaged his eyes. Then he readjusted his glasses and fixed his gaze on Doug, who wondered how many times he had used the move in negotiations. And that, Doug thought, was what this would be to him now. Another negotiation.
“Mr McGregor,” he said, “I’m not sure where you get your ideas from, but I must tell you that this is the worst form of fanciful nonsense and, if I may say, utterly slanderous. Yes, I know Mr Hayes, vaguely. But my work here means I’m on the boards of dozens of companies, and your claims that I’m somehow involved in some kind of pornography ring is ludicrous.”
Doug did nothing to rein in the smile he felt spread across his lips.
“Who said anything about porn, Mr Leonard?” he asked. “All I said was a site called the Devils. Could be anything. Not that you can really deny it; I’ve found images there that show you were in it up to your, ah, balls. No wonder you were so keen to keep it quiet. Killing Redmonds would have been your only option, wouldn’t it? After he told you that he’d lost his laptop and key, it was all about to come out. His trysts with Alicia, the site, your involvement. Your clients wouldn’t have been too happy about that, would they, Michael?”
Leonard leaned across his desk as though he was struggling to hear Doug. “Now hang on, if you think I killed Paul –”
“Oh fucking quit it,” Doug said. He held up the sheaf of print-outs again. “It’s all here. The chat logs. You assuring your clients that the situation would be dealt with. That their details were secure. That you had hired ‘outside help’ to deal with me and…” – Doug referred to one of the print-outs – ‘another example of gross incompetence’.”
He paused. Leonard was glaring at him with enough vehemence to melt stone.
“See, that’s the bit that confused me. Having Coulter killed just to send a message to Mark seemed a bit over the top, even for someone with your taste for, ah, discipline. But then I looked at the financials for the Docking Station. Seems Coulter was in for a very big payday when you floated the company. With him gone and the flotation going ahead, you and Paradigm were in line for a very, very good day, weren’t you, Michael?”
Leonard was on his feet now, eyes locked on the print-outs in Doug’s hands. “You can’t, they can’t be…” he whispered.
Doug sighed. Denial. He’d seen it so many times before, and yet, no matter how compelling the evidence, some people refused to admi
t the truth, almost as if they didn’t want to believe their own guilt.
“Take a look for yourself,” he said, tossing the print-outs across the table to Leonard. “Keep them as a memento if you want, I’ve got plenty of copies. Bet you thought you were clever, with everyone using your middle name, James. All the messages are in your name, and I’ve got a friend who can trace the location they were sent from – either here or Inveresk.”
Leonard grabbed for the files, shuffling through them rapidly. “No,” he murmured. “No, no, no. This isn’t right. Yes, I mean, yes, okay, I set up the Devils, but Mark came to me with the idea. He, he…” Leonard looked up, something cracking in his voice. It made Doug want to hit him. “He hacked my browsing history, you see, saw some of the sites I was looking at. Said he could make it so much better, so much more secure and personal. So, yes, we set it up, but I never, never…”
Doug shook his head, pushed himself out of the chair, the anger rising as he stood to his full height. Suddenly, he was back in Portobello, driving his boot into Paul Redmonds again and again and again. The sudden urge to do the same to the man in front of him was almost overwhelming.
“Save it. The police have copies of all this, they’ll be asking you the same questions soon enough. But before that, I wanted to give you a message. It’s from a friend of mine. Susie Drummond? You know, the woman that sick fuck Redmonds used to send you and your cunt of a wife a message? The one whose image he tried to blackmail me with? Want to hear what the message is?”
Leonard looked up from the print-outs, almost as though he had forgotten Doug was there.
“The message,” Doug said slowly, hearing the tremor of rage in his voice and fighting not to release it, “is, ‘you are fucked’.”
Leonard stared at Doug then jerked his head back to the print-outs. He was shaking his head violently now, as though he could ward off the print-outs – as if they were evil spirits. Maybe they were.
“You’re fucking pathetic,” Doug said, turning to leave. He was halfway to the door when he heard the smooth rasp of a drawer being opened.
“McGregor,” Leonard said in a voice that was barely human.
Doug turned, eyes falling on the long, glinting object clamped in Leonard’s right hand. Suddenly he could hear Rebecca’s voice in his mind, from the morning after Redmonds had died. There was a stab wound about an inch above the belly button. Something thin and very sharp…
Something very like the blade that Leonard was now brandishing.
Doug held up his hands, wildly looking around the room. Nothing he could use as a weapon. How far was he from the door? Could he…?
“Now hold on,” he said. “This won’t…”
Leonard smiled, a horrible baring of the teeth. The facade was gone, the veneer of successful businessman replaced by whatever it was that lived deeper in him – the thing that had driven him to find pleasure in the degradation and abuse of others. There was madness in that smile. And desperation.
“You have no idea, do you, McGregor?” he said, pushing himself away from the desk and standing upright. “You think you’re so clever, but you’re only seeing what you’re being allowed to see. All the devils are here, McGregor, and you’ll meet them soon enough. Oh, and tell that little bitch Drummond that she was right, I am fucked. But I’m not the only one.”
Leonard took a step to the side, clearing the desk. Doug tensed, ready to dodge, try to hit him and then run for it. Leonard moved forward, bringing the knife up to eye level. It glinted off the lenses of his glasses and Doug tensed, waiting.
And then in one fluid, almost graceful movement, Michael Leonard flipped the knife around and opened his own throat with it.
56
In the chaos that followed, the last pieces of the puzzle started to fit into place for Susie. She ran the checks on the entry gates system at the Leonards’ home, the footage showing that Redmonds had visited the night he died, stayed for an hour, then left. Forensic analysis of the property showed nothing conclusive. There were fibres and hairs from Redmonds at the scene, and the remnants of a towel in one of the bins that had traces of his blood, but not enough to indicate he had been stabbed on the scene. And he would have been bleeding anyway, after the beating he had taken earlier in the night. The beating, Susie thought, Doug had given him. For her.
A check of Alicia Leonard’s phone records found a brief call made about twenty minutes after Redmonds had left Inveresk. And although they couldn’t ask Michael Leonard, who was lying in a coma in the Royal Infirmary, the thinking was that Alicia had phoned him and he had contacted Redmonds, arranged to meet, then stabbed him with the knife that he had threatened Doug with; a wickedly sharpened letter opener with a thin, long blade.
Susie dived into the work, using it as a shield against the abject terror and near-paralysing paranoia that Burns was going to confront her at any moment with the actual picture Redmonds had shown Doug, or some inconsistency in the story they had told him. But he never did. He was too busy trying to nail Doug for whatever he could to look closely at the version of events leading up to what happened in Leonard’s office.
Which left Susie to do the legwork.
It didn’t take long to verify what Doug had said in his witness statement, that Michael Leonard was connected to the Docking Station and Brian Coulter through Paradigm, which had invested in the company and stood to make a substantial profit when it was floated on the stock market. The problem was, Coulter wanted to keep the company private – and in his control. So killing him served two purposes: it terrified Mark Hayes and ensured Paradigm could cash in. It was, Susie was forced to admit, very efficient.
Hayes gave them the rest of it, almost gleefully enthusiastic when he admitted to setting up the Devils website for Michael Leonard, who went by the name Mr James. He insisted that, although he knew some of the material involved was illegal, he never looked at or “enjoyed that type of thing” himself.
Susie found she didn’t care if he was telling the truth or not. Either way, the little shit disgusted her. She saw no flicker of recognition in his eyes when they sat across from each other in an interview room, but still the doubt remained, tormenting the dark corners of her thoughts. Had he seen the picture of her? Were there others? Colin had found no other related images of her, and the master file seemed to have been deleted, but still the question remained. And what made it worse, what would continue to burn her in the quiet moments when sleep wouldn’t come, was the knowledge that she would never truly know the answer. The site itself had crashed not long after Hayes was taken into custody, the IT boys saying it was hit by some kind of recursive virus that corrupted the data. When they confronted Hayes, he only gave a small, proud smile and a shrug of the shoulders.
Little bastard.
She felt the urge to call Doug, to talk to him about it all, but knew she couldn’t. With Burns on the warpath, going near him at the moment would be suicide. And besides, if she did, what would she say? Thank him for trying to look after her, for keeping the existence of the picture a secret and her out of it, or curse him for making her an accomplice in his lies? She didn’t know, but still the urge remained. And she knew she would give in to it sooner or later.
Knew too that it was the reason she was staying away from Rebecca. After all, how would the conversation with her go? “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got a hell of a secret that I can only talk to your boyfriend about. You okay if I do that over a takeaway and a bottle of wine? Just the two of us? Thanks.”
No. Maybe not.
So, instead, she fell back on what she knew and hit the gym. She worked out almost frantically, lifting weights heavier than she normally would, letting the burning in her muscles wash through her, blotting out all other thoughts. And at the end of every set, she found herself checking her phone, just to make sure there hadn’t been a call.
Finally, sweaty and shaking and unable to do any more,
she swiped a numb hand over the screen and unlocked the phone. Accessed the iTunes library and killed the music blaring through her earphones. Then, on an impulse, she tapped out a text message, let her finger hover over the Send key then hit it.
Time for one more answer.
57
Janet MacFarlane clamped the cigarette between her lips, fingers trembling as she stabbed at its weaving tip with her lighter. She cursed, took a long, steadying breath and finally managed to get it lit, sucking on the filter greedily, swallowing the smoke and the bitter, acrid taste as she closed her eyes.
She was standing outside the hospital, near the entrance to the A&E department. She considered her options then headed up the hill and onto the path that snaked around the back of the hospital. She knew there was a helicopter pad at the top of the hill, wished suddenly that there was a copter sitting on it, waiting to take her away from here and the pulped mess of a husband she had just stepped away from.
He was stable, the doctors had said. He should have been dead from the injuries he had suffered, the trauma of the beating and the knife wounds that wrapped their way up his arms like bloody tattoos. While there were no guarantees, he was strong, and his vitals were improving.
“Cause for cautious optimism, Mrs MacFarlane,” one of the doctors had told her, a thin smear of a man with nervous eyes, a bald head and a smile that made Janet want to cave his face in.
She felt a sudden stab of dark fury lance through her, mixing with something more cancerous than the smoke from the cigarette. She felt heat rise behind her eyes and swallowed down the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. Crying was for the weak. And now, more than ever, she needed to be strong.
She dialled the number and held the phone to her ear. It seemed to ring forever before it was answered.
“Hello?”
The voice was so cool and controlled that Janet had to suppress the urge to throw the phone to the pavement and grind it beneath her foot. She tossed the cigarette instead. “It’s me,” she said, hearing the raw edge of jagged anger in her voice and doing nothing to hide it.
All the Devils Page 24
