Bred in the Bone

by Christopher Brookmyre

  It was the smell of the tea, the sense closest to memory working in combination with this sight to dredge up a recollection not merely of scent and vision, but of gut-wrenching feeling. She had experienced this recall two years previously, as he sat in front of her in a hotel dining room, having breakfast with the ingénue private investigator Jasmine Sharp. That had been when she realised who Fallan really was.

  She felt her revulsion rising up, threatening to overwhelm her. She had to get out of the room.

  ‘Let’s leave our guest to drink his tea in peace,’ she said, ordering an adjournment to the hall. ‘His throat must be parched from all that talking.’

  Catherine stepped out first, even the smell of whatever bogging gunk they used to mop the corridor a welcome breath after what the tea was making her feel inside the interview room.

  ‘So how are you liking the strong silent type now?’ she asked Laura. This was a dig at the fact that Laura developed a bit of a fascination with Fallan after they first met, having seen only the side he wanted her to: that of gallant protector of the young and vulnerable Ms Jasmine Sharp.

  Laura wouldn’t speak openly about it, but Catherine knew she had suffered at the hands of an abusive partner, which was partly why she left Lothian & Borders and transferred to Strathclyde. She hadn’t been damaged enough to fall into the familiar trap of deluding herself that her own abuser would change, but Catherine suspected part of Laura desperately needed to believe in some noble masculine ideal, which Fallan had come to represent in her wounded mind.

  Catherine surprised herself with the bitterness of her tone. She realised that she couldn’t stand the idea that Laura – that anyone – didn’t detest Fallan like she did. She wanted Laura to see what she saw when she looked at him and thus to share her hatred, but she couldn’t do that without exposing what lay buried at its foundations.

  ‘I don’t understand why he’s doing this,’ Laura confessed in frustration. ‘Denying nothing. Refuting nothing. What does it benefit him?’

  ‘He knows he’s fucked,’ said Beano. ‘Nothing he can say will help him, so he’s happy to let us do all the running.’

  ‘But we’re piling the bricks on top of him and it’s like he’s just lying down to be buried.’

  If this was confusing Laura, it was making Catherine wary. She had sussed that Fallan wasn’t lying down to be buried. He was lying low, lying in wait, and she couldn’t help wondering what for.

  ‘Something about this feels off,’ Laura said. ‘Why does a guy like Fallan suddenly go rogue and reckless, after going to such efforts to put his past behind him?’

  ‘Maybe it was never behind him,’ Catherine suggested. ‘Maybe he just got better at covering it up.’

  ‘He was pretty good at covering it up back then,’ Laura replied. ‘He doesn’t have a sheet.’

  Beano looked incredulous, then swapped it for mild surprise that Laura could have overlooked the explanation.

  ‘Ingrams or Fallan?’ he asked.

  ‘Neither,’ Catherine admitted. ‘But that says more about his resourcefulness than his morality. His father was the notorious Iain Fallan, a quite legendarily corrupt police officer. Glen Fallan grew up learning everything there is to know about how to stay off our radar.’

  ‘Which is exactly my point,’ Laura stressed. ‘Why would a guy so accomplished at avoiding detection drive up in his own car and shoot somebody in front of three witnesses?’

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ Catherine replied. ‘But here’s what I do know: you can be waiting twenty years for a guy like this to fuck up, so when he finally does you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You’re letting your judgment be skewed by the fact that Fallan helped us out a couple of years back, maybe because he was going through some kind of midlife crisis and decided he needed a bit of redemption. It doesn’t work like that though, not for what this bastard’s done in his time. If he’s looking to pay his dues, there’s a publicly funded programme for it: it’s called the Scottish fucking Prison Service.’

  Loyalties

  Jasmine was putting some pasta on the boil when she heard her doorbell ring, jolting her into sudden self-consciousness as she sang along to Chvrches just a little too loud. She looked at the clock and noticed to her surprise that it was after nine, so this set her on guard a little. It hadn’t been the light and tentative, sorry-to-disturb-you ring of a neighbour come to ask a favour or hand over a misdelivered letter, but the firm, insistent press of somebody who expected an answer.

  Part of her was pleased to see that it was so late. She had been to the range and lost track of the hours, which had largely been the purpose of the exercise. Work had started at just after six, a surveillance with an early start because they had to be outside the subject’s house in Pitlochry before the school run. She had clocked off at four and needed to occupy herself for the remainder of the day. A bout of her new favourite pastime had delivered.

  She had first tried air-rifle shooting while investigating a missing person case, she and Fallan tracking down a former police marksman to his current job running the field sports centre attached to a big hotel in the Borders. Fallan and the instructor had remarked that she was a natural, and she assumed they were winding her up until she saw the paper targets they had retrieved. She had enjoyed the experience more than she could possibly have anticipated, and often found herself thinking back to it, remembering the feel of the weapon in her hands and the sensation of the kick against her shoulder. She was curious to know whether her results had merely been beginner’s luck, so when she overheard one of the Galt Linklater guys talking about a range of which he was a member out near East Kilbride, she had asked if she could come along as a guest.

  Now she was a member herself, as well as the slightly self-conscious and enduringly dubious (as opposed to proud) owner of two different rifles. The gas gun was more accurate because there was no recoil and so she could maintain her stance between shots, but now and again she went back to the spring-powered rifle because it was the type she had first used, and because she enjoyed the rhythm and the ritual: break, prime, load and fire.

  Shooting had become an invaluable source of peace, calm and relaxation. When she was on the range she could reduce her world to an impregnable little vortex. There was only the target, the crosshairs, her finger, her breathing, her pulse. Time became elastic in the moments before she squeezed the trigger; seconds stretched and minutes compressed. Sometimes she could reach for the next pellet and find the tin empty, discovering that two hours had just dissolved.

  Jasmine put her front door on the chain, remembering, as she always did, Glen Fallan asking how likely it was that she’d be attacked by an angry Girl Guide: this being in his estimation the upper limit of the potential intruder this security measure was capable of stopping. She opened the door just a little and spied a female figure in trainers, three-quarter-length lycra running trousers and a T-shirt. Her flushed face was familiar but out of place, so it took Jasmine a moment to recognise her. The authoritative doorbell ring should have helped, she realised.

  ‘Hi, Jasmine. Sorry to trouble you so late. I’m Laura Geddes, remember? I work with Catherine McLeod. Do you mind if I come in?’

  ‘No, sure.’

  Jasmine undid the chain and led Laura inside to the kitchen, doubly curious as to the nature of this visit given the hour and the dress code.

  ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘Just some tap water would be great.’

  Good answer, Jasmine thought. Apart from milk for tea she was down to one can of Irn-Bru and in pressing need of a trip to the supermarket.

  Laura gulped down half a pint and accepted a refill before taking a seat at the kitchen table. She had tiny beads of moisture on her forehead and arms, a fresh smell of the outdoors about her. It reminded Jasmine uncomfortably of how her mum used to smell when she came home on those occasions Jasmine was off school sick and had been indoors, laid up in bed all day.

  Laura’s hair was
different, which was another reason Jasmine had struggled to place her. It was shorter and she had dyed it, resulting in a blonde bob that was at odds with Jasmine’s residual mental image of her. It made her seem a little brighter, more open. Laura had often given Jasmine the impression she was hiding behind her hair when it fell across her face. She had seemed skittish rather than shy, and a little mirthless. For all that, she always seemed more approachable than her boss, but this wasn’t saying much.

  Catherine McLeod was a Detective Superintendent, but in Jasmine’s mind her official rank was Queen Crabbit Cow. If Jasmine tried on bitch every so often to see how it felt, then McLeod must have had it spliced into her genes. She didn’t know what she had ever done to piss the woman off, but Jasmine always got as much warmth from her as a dying penguin’s last fart. It seemed particularly unfair given that Jasmine’s contributions had helped her close two major cases; but rather than gratitude, this only seemed to inspire resentment. Admittedly there was the small matter, in one of those cases, of Jasmine seriously perverting the course of justice, but McLeod didn’t know about this, so that couldn’t be the reason she was so down on her.

  It wasn’t about Jasmine though, she knew: it was Fallan she hated. Any time Jasmine had been in McLeod’s company, the big man had been part of the deal. Jasmine had thus fielded her share of suspicion and disapproval in accordance with McLeod’s ‘fly with the crows, get shot with the crows’ principle.

  As Laura sat at Jasmine’s table, pasta bubbling on the cooker just behind her, she wasn’t radiating hostility or attempting to intimidate; Jasmine got the impression she was here to share, but there still seemed something about her that was closed off, defensive and even afraid. Laura might let you be her ally but she wouldn’t let you be her friend.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get you on your phone, but you weren’t answering. I was out for a run and my route took me over this way, so I thought I’d just see if you were home.’

  Jasmine didn’t remember ignoring any calls or seeing that she had missed any. She wondered whether Laura had the right number for her; she certainly had the right address. She hadn’t previously given thought to the fact that McLeod and her people knew where she lived, but they were the polis, after all.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Laura took another gulp of water and wiped her brow with her forearm. The tiny beads of sweat were starting to pool and run in the warmth of the kitchen.

  ‘There was a murder yesterday. I don’t know if you heard about it.’

  Jasmine had seen something on the front page of someone else’s Daily Record, but hadn’t paid it much heed other than to connect it to the traffic congestion Andy Smith had warned about.

  ‘Fleetingly. Over in Shawburn?’

  ‘That’s right. It was a guy called Stevie Fullerton.’

  Laura stared at her a moment. Jasmine felt she was being scrutinised to gauge any possible reaction.

  ‘I’ve got an alibi.’

  ‘Do you know who he was?’

  She vaguely remembered the name. It had been one of many thrown accusatorily at Fallan by McLeod the first time she met her, the policewoman gatecrashing their breakfast when Jasmine was lying low at a city-centre hotel. Whether Fullerton had been a criminal associate of Fallan’s or a gangland rival, she couldn’t remember. Even from the context it had been clear McLeod was digging up ancient history.

  ‘Gangster,’ Jasmine answered. ‘Drug dealer. General malefactor. What do I win?’

  Laura didn’t appear to be in the mood for banter, though to be honest Jasmine couldn’t remember there ever being a time when she was.

  ‘He was shot four times in the chest at a car wash. Several witnesses plus CCTV gave us the perpetrator’s licence plate and vehicle, which did not turn out to be stolen. We apprehended the suspect and have him in custody.’

  ‘Congrats. Sounds like a quick result. What does it have to do with me?’

  ‘The suspect is Glen Fallan.’

  Jasmine didn’t have a snappy comeback for that.

  The mere mention of his name always provoked a confused mix of emotions. This was the man who had confessed to killing the father she’d never met; yet even after that confession she had invited him into her flat again. On more than one occasion he had sat where Laura was now, and while he was at her table Jasmine had felt safer than at any time since the loss of her mother.

  Perhaps unable to immediately process the enormity of what she had been told, among her first instinctive responses was a laughably petty disappointment that he had been in town without telling her.

  ‘He hasn’t been in touch with me,’ she said, growing awkward in the lengthening silence.

  ‘We know. He hasn’t been in touch with anybody. Since his arrest he’s made no phone calls, refused legal assistance and is answering no questions.’

  The same instinct caused Jasmine to wonder why he hadn’t got in touch to say he was in trouble. Then she wondered what gave her any reason to think that he would.

  ‘Did you know he kept a gun concealed in his car?’

  ‘I take it we’re off the record right now?’

  Laura nodded.

  ‘I wouldn’t be here talking to you if he didn’t keep a gun in his car. He saved my life more than once. I know the guy’s got a past, but I thought that’s what it was: the past. I can’t believe he would just shoot some gangster, though. Not unless it was self-defence.’

  ‘It wasn’t. It was execution-style, while the guy’s view was blanked out by foam on his windscreen.’

  Jasmine had no response to this.

  On the hob, the pasta was threatening to boil over. She turned down the gas a notch, unsure if she was even hungry any more.

  ‘Do you know what it was about?’ Jasmine asked.

  ‘No. Nobody’s talking. Not Fallan and not Fullerton’s people. Nobody will tell us anything. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping you might be able to help.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about Fallan’s history. He knew my mum way back when, but neither of them was ever forthcoming about those days.’

  ‘Maybe the time has come for you to do some digging, then. There’s questions you can ask that we can’t. People who might speak to you who would never talk us.’

  ‘So you’re asking me to do your job for you and play my part in helping send Fallan to jail?’

  ‘We can do that easily enough without your help, Jasmine. Catherine McLeod thinks all her Christmases have come at once: she’s got Stevie Fullerton on a slab and Glen Fallan on a plate. It’s just that, to me, there’s something I can’t place, something about this that feels a little . . . off.’

  ‘It must feel very off for you to be telling tales out of school like this.’

  Laura’s expression darkened, a hunted look coming over her, as though she may have misjudged her circumstances.

  ‘I came here in the strictest confidence,’ she said firmly. ‘I hope that’s understood. I don’t need to tell you how motivated Catherine is about this.’

  ‘Like a dog with two dicks, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Eating Winalot laced with Viagra. But that’s why I’m concerned, in case there’s an angle we might be missing. Fallan isn’t helping himself, and we can only respond to what’s in front of us, so if there’s more to this than meets the eye you might be the only person in a position to look for it.’

  The Penitent

  Catherine pulled her car into the driveway and brought it to a stop, then spent a few moments in silence, performing a little ritual that had become her custom before entering her home. She had read about a mental exercise carried out by certain tennis players in order to prevent self-recrimination over a poor last point seeping into their thought processes and undermining their efforts for the next. They would walk away from the baseline and cross an imaginary barrier before turning around. When they re-crossed the barrier, they left behind whatever had gone before and thought only of the point to be played.

  C
atherine’s mental exercise was her way of leaving the job in the car, and not taking it with her into the house. She would allow herself a little while to perform a quick audit in her head, creating a list of the things that needed to be addressed only when she got back into the car, as there was nothing constructive she could do in between times. During this brief tally she would also force herself to acknowledge what was going well or had been resolved, rather than merely fretting over her to-do list and picking at the scabs of problems.

  Drew always said she should never be afraid to share her worries, to unload on him when she needed a sounding board, but she had become increasingly dubious as to whether this ever achieved any kind of catharsis. She seldom felt any better afterwards, and was conscious of having polluted their home, like she had been ankle deep in blood and shit then come home and tramped it through the carpet.

  It was Drew’s way of trying to be supportive and understanding, but it was also what he hoped was a bulwark against her periodic descents into a state of emotional isolation – ‘this dark place you go’ – that had proven mutually wounding in the past.

  ‘You’re angry on the road to that place and you’re unreachable when you get there,’ Drew once put it. ‘But what’s hardest is you’re numb for days afterwards.’

  He thought if she could let out a little at a time it would stop the build-up of pressure, but what he didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the pressure of the job that led her there. It was the job that helped keep her away from it.

  The job wasn’t easy, it exposed her to some very horrible things, but she knew she needed it. What she didn’t need was its effluent leaking into her family’s home, so she had taken steps to prevent that.

  Sometimes she was self-conscious about Drew seeing her through the window, just sitting there with the engine running, as she had never told him about this. She had an excuse prepared – she would say she was listening to the end of something on the radio – but either he’d never noticed or simply had never been curious enough to ask.