Bred in the Bone

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘If they’re happy to give back the laptop, that means they can’t have found anything compromising.’

  ‘Aye. Or else they’ve deleted it.’

  Beano hurried on down the stairs and Catherine resumed her ascent.

  She had made a call to Graeme Sunderland and asked him to request a meeting with the DCC on her behalf. She knew that Sunderland not only spoke Drummond’s language, but was closer to his rank and knew how to handle him. Thus Sunderland had established that Drummond had a window to chat before admitting that it wouldn’t be himself who was doing the talking.

  As she reached the landing and turned left through the swing doors she was beginning to question the wisdom of this, doubts assailing her as to whether this was a conversation that she needed or wanted to have. She liked to think she had a good track record of speaking truth to power – perhaps at cost to her advancement on occasion – but there was a voice in her head asking whether this was an exercise that unnecessarily put her in harm’s way.

  In a jungle of political animals, Drummond was an alpha predator. He was shrewd, calculating, slippery and ruthless, an arch strategist who had hidden agendas inside his hidden agendas, and an ear for the subtext in every statement. He was so much in his element among the upper echelons of management that it was almost amusing to think of him once upon a time out conducting inquiries, taking statements, getting bodies. The very notion was like seeing unearthed footage of a cabinet minister working behind the bar as a student.

  He was on the panel that interviewed her for the LOCUST job. She had always assumed Abercorn made sure Drummond recognised one of his tribe, but only now was she contemplating how that might only have been part of it. Just as big a factor could have been that Drummond had taken a dislike to her.

  He wasn’t someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of. Abercorn, for all his machinations, gave the impression of having very little ego. It was all in the game to him, which was why he was so thick-skinned about LOCUST’s unpopularity. Drummond, by contrast, was self-regarding and spiteful.

  As Moira put it, ‘it’s always about him: that’s his weakness and his strength. If you never lose sight of that, you’ll be fine.’

  Catherine was grateful for the advice, but suspected that in order to be fine she’d need a lot more than that.

  She’d have been wary of mentioning the subject of Bob Cairns with the DCC even before she learned they had worked together. His name was well up anybody’s list of Things We Don’t Talk About, but to Drummond, a man who was inclined to take embarrassments to the force as a personal affront – as though people had cooked it all up just to make him look bad – then you’d better have a bloody good reason for bringing it up. It would be like going up to Michael Barrymore and saying, ‘Hey, can we talk swimming pools?’

  In fact, Catherine was wary of mentioning Bob Cairns to any cop over a certain age, because even if they never knew him personally they might still be inclined to harbour a vicarious resentment towards her for putting him away.

  Cairns had a charge sheet of murder and corruption going back thirty years, a paid lieutenant of the notorious Iain Fallan in his bloody pact with the self-styled Gallowhaugh Godfather himself, Tony McGill. If he had been in any other line of work she’d have been fêted for a bloody good collar. Unfortunately, when it came to unmasking bent cops, the messenger always got shot. Everybody knew you did the right thing, but nobody was going to thank you for it. Most of them wished it all had never happened, which was fair enough, but others were clearly of the belief that it would have been better if it all had simply never come out.

  The question was which camp Drummond fell into.

  Catherine pictured herself outside the headmaster’s office as she knocked at his door, expecting to hear ‘Come!’ barked out in response. Instead, Drummond appeared at the door and held it open for her, beckoning her inside. He seemed approachable to the point of solicitous.

  She wondered what she had done to deserve this welcome, then she remembered that this was part of his game. Like any politician, you wouldn’t get far unless you could turn on the charm, and carefully control which face you presented to any given audience.

  It was a timely warning. No matter what they discussed, Drummond would be polite, professional, calm and measured; and he would give no outward hint that she was being blacklisted for ever, right then and there.

  She would have to pitch all of this with meticulous judgment, aware that simply by having arranged this meeting at all – even by requesting it – she was already starting at a deficit.

  He showed her to a chair but remained on his feet. He took position behind his desk, framed by large windows offering a view north-east from Govan towards the city. Look at my domain, he was saying. He didn’t need the cheap psychology to emphasise his stature. He was very tall, if rather awkwardly so, reminding Catherine of her image of Steerpike in Titus Groan.

  His hair was grey all over these days, in contrast to the conspicuously monochrome black dye job he sported for way too many years when he was vain about still appearing youthful. He had obviously decided that in senior management it was better to look distinguished, which made her wonder whether he was the only guy in the building to actually dye some of his hair grey in order to maximise the look.

  ‘So,’ he said, demonstrably ready for business now that he had composed the situation. ‘DCI Sunderland said you wanted to speak to me about the Fullerton case?’

  He pitched a tone of inquiring puzzlement, as though he didn’t see how this could possibly be so and was curious to discover how.

  ‘Actually, sir, it’s a related matter that I was hoping you could help me with. Shortly prior to his death, Fullerton appeared to be taking a pronounced interest in an old murder case, one that you played a part in investigating.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said, still sounding unsure where he might fit in. ‘And is your area of interest not covered in the files?’

  Catherine concealed a wince, aware that, only moments in, the deficit had already increased. She wasn’t just in danger of looking impertinent, but incompetent too.

  ‘We can’t find the files, sir. The case is a quarter-century old, and I don’t know when you were last in the morgue, but . . .’

  He gave an impatient nod.

  ‘It’s like a fractal experiment down there, I know,’ he acknowledged, though this concession didn’t necessarily mean he accepted her excuse. ‘What was the case?’

  Catherine took a breath.

  ‘Julie Muir. She was murdered by a man called Teddy Sheehan. I believe the investigation was led by Bob Cairns.’

  So there it was: out. She had reasoned that there was no going back now, so she ought to dive straight in. Any fannying about regarding the Cairns part was to imply that she thought Drummond had reason to be uncomfortable, and she really didn’t want that.

  Drummond stared at her for a long moment, leaning forward, both his forefingers and thumbs resting on his desk, little arches at the ends of his arms. Then he nodded and stood up straight again.

  ‘What’s important to remember about Bob Cairns is that the revelations about his criminal activities do not automatically suggest that everything he did was corrupt, or that all of his police work is automatically suspect.’

  Catherine opened her mouth to acknowledge his point, but clearly it wasn’t her turn to speak yet. Far from it, in fact.

  ‘And although it in no way excuses any of the dreadful things he did, it remains true that Cairns would not have survived in the job as long as he did were it not for the fact that he was a highly competent investigator. Indeed, I worked with him, and indeed I learned a few things at his side but, like everybody else, I had no inkling about the other aspect of his character.’

  He went on in that vein for a bit, laying it all down, speaking like he was the one who had called her here to talk about it. That was when something struck her about his manner, never having been one on one with him before: he spoke like he wa
s giving a press conference. Everything he said was considered, neutral and precise. And as Moira said, it was always about him.

  Catherine wondered what he was like with the wife of a morning, over breakfast.

  ‘What needs to be stressed about this coffee is that though the milk itself has turned, this in no way reflects upon the quality of the beans, and should not be allowed to colour people’s impressions of the croissants or the jam.’

  Catherine waited until the official statement on the DCC’s lack of contamination by Bob Cairns was over, before reminding him of what she was actually here to discuss.

  ‘Do you remember much about the case, sir?’

  He glanced out of the window, a calculated pause to add gravity to his next pronouncement.

  ‘I remember too much about it. Even if it hadn’t been one of my first murder cases, I’m sure it would still have stuck. It was just one of those dreadful affairs, tragedy upon misery; no closure, just completion. A young woman was murdered, her family devastated. We got the killer, but there was no satisfaction in that. He confessed and the evidence was uncomplicatedly irrefutable, but nobody was buying trebles to celebrate a result, you know? I mean, we’ve both had cases where you feel it in the gut, almost a sense of elation that you put the bastard away, but this wasn’t one of them.’

  He looked down at his desk, regret weighing heavy upon his features. She could only spy it from a certain angle, but it was the most human emotion she had ever seen on his face.

  ‘Sheehan died in prison a few years later, did you know that?’ he asked.

  She answered with a nod.

  ‘There were conflicting accounts, rumours it was a suicide,’ he stated quietly. ‘I don’t think it matters either way: it was one tragedy compounding another.’

  When he raised his head again, he was composed once more, back in press-conference mode.

  ‘Should he have been in the general prison population? A place like Bailliehall? I don’t think so. Was he competent to make that confession? I’m not sure; it wouldn’t even be procedurally legal these days and a competent lawyer would be able to drive a coach and horses through the whole thing. Did we get the right man? Absolutely. That was the only consolation. It was as nailed on as the one you’re dealing with now, with Fullerton and this Fallan character. How is that coming along, by the way?’

  ‘Well, sir, our efforts right now are centred on what Fullerton might have done to precipitate his death, which is why I’m here. We know he visited Sheehan’s sister Brenda, and he was at the Mitchell Library looking up old press reports of the murder. To that end, can you think of any reason why Fullerton might have been interested in the Julie Muir case?’

  He was shaking his head before she finished speaking.

  ‘I honestly can’t. There was no gangland connection, so—’

  ‘Unless you count Bob Cairns,’ she interjected, instantly regretting it.

  Drummond didn’t bite, though. Rather, he looked like he was considering it.

  ‘I still can’t see where it would fit together,’ he said. ‘Was there any other link between Fullerton and Brenda Sheehan? And how lucid is she, these days? That was another tragic element to the whole mess: the poor woman was—’

  ‘She’s dead, sir.’

  Drummond looked shaken. He was a man used to pretending nothing was news to him, even as he was learning it, but his gifts were failing him now.

  ‘But you just said Fullerton . . .’

  ‘We found her two days ago. She had choked on her own vomit. The autopsy hasn’t been completed yet, but I think she was murdered. She hadn’t touched a drop in years, but her house was staged to make it look like she was back on the drink with a vengeance.’

  Drummond put a hand to his mouth. There were no prepared statements to be read out on this one.

  He turned away and gazed out of the windows. He didn’t want to look at her, and quite possibly didn’t want to be seen right now either. Catherine had feared raising the spectre of Bob Cairns, but now Drummond looked haunted by a different ghost.

  This press conference was over.

  All the Small Things

  Glen often heard murders or other acts of violence attributed to gang wars, drug wars and turf wars. Indisputably, gangs, drugs and territory were factors in these incidents, but they were never the primary cause. In Glasgow, folk didn’t plan ahead when it came to bloodshed. They didn’t go in for campaigns and strategies. Vendettas, yes. Feuds, absolutely. Tit for tat. Grudges. Vengeance. There were wars of attrition that could span decades and even generations, but they were never over anything so abstract as a commodity. It was always personal. Always petty.

  Petty. From the French petit, meaning small. Small things, small men. It was said that a person was only as big as the smallest thing that annoyed them, and no matter how high they climbed, none of the criminals Glen knew was ever bigger than the most trivial slight. None of them was ever wise enough, secure enough, to just walk away. When they went to war, no matter how history dressed it up, ultimately it was over their own fragile egos.

  Pish wars. That’s what they truly were, but that didn’t read so well in the newspapers and the true-crime best-sellers.

  Looking back, it was inevitable that Stevie Fullerton and Tony McGill were going to clash. Stevie was as ruthless as he was ambitious, and while he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to make an enemy of Tony, if Tony got between Stevie and what he wanted Stevie would never have been shy of the fight. Tony, for his part, had that endemic Glaswegian affliction whereby he just hated seeing somebody else getting on. The sight of somebody younger and sharper, making plans and making money, bothered him more than losing money himself or his own plans going awry. Their interests didn’t need to run contrary in order for Tony to feel threatened. He was a middle-aged man still kidding himself that he was in his prime, that the best was yet to come, and everything he saw in Stevie told him otherwise.

  Stevie bought a pub over in Croftbank, where he grew up. This was when Glen began to understand what he meant when he said there were things you couldn’t buy with a sports bag full of fivers. He had already got the lease on Nokturn, but he wanted bricks and mortar. He was empire-building, and starting close to home.

  Too close to Tony’s home.

  Croftbank was three miles along the dual carriageway from Gallowhaugh, past Shawburn and closer to the city. The pub was called the Bleacher’s Vaults, where Stevie had been drinking since he was old enough and bold enough to get served, and which had latterly functioned as his unofficial HQ.

  The official licensee was still Donny Lawson, the same guy whose name had been on the paper for a decade, but both the business and the premises were separately owned by Stevie through two shell companies, one of which also owned the ‘company’ that owned his car-wash business.

  Stevie moved his money like a magician working the cup-and-balls routine: just when you thought you knew what he’d done with it, you realised he was up to something else. A pub, being largely a cash-only business, was another good way of turning dirty money into legitimately accounted profits, but the car wash was still adequate for what Stevie needed laundered at that stage. Clearly, he anticipated having larger revenue streams to process in the very near future.

  Maybe Tony understood these ramifications and maybe he didn’t. Either way, he decided to put down a marker by offering to supply the Bleacher’s Vaults with spirits. He was sleekit about it too: sent his new bag man, Arthur, to talk to Donny Lawson, who was happy enough to meet the prices being quoted.

  This was how it got murky, entirely in keeping with Tony’s intentions. Some might say he was disrespectful in going behind Stevie’s back rather than talking to him directly, but Tony could claim he was according Stevie a certain status by showing that he regarded purchases such as this as matters for their respective underlings to deal with. However, this latter interpretation overlooked the widespread understanding that Tony ‘offering’ drink to a pub or a restaurant mad
e a very strong statement about the nature of his relationship with that establishment’s proprietor.

  Egotism. Pettiness. Pish.

  Tony wasn’t trying to do Stevie a favour or work out a mutually beneficial arrangement; nor was he struggling for outlets for his supplies of smuggled and stolen drink. He was telling him: know your place.

  Equally, it was in Stevie’s gift to humour the older man, take his cheap booze and let him kid himself he was the Gallowhaugh Godfather if he wanted to. Stevie didn’t need to make Tony an enemy until he was an enemy, and that was how Stevie played it – on the surface at least. In reality, by dipping his fingers into his business Tony had not only infuriated Stevie but had inadvertently made it clear that he would present an obstacle to his ambitions.

  Stevie said nothing about the booze Tony was supplying. He appeared to take it in his stride, even inviting Tony to the Bleacher’s Vaults for the official Under New Management re-opening party, where he gave him all the deference the older man felt he was due. Stevie played the part of the eager and ambitious up-and-comer, a man with plans and new ideas but who knew he could still learn from a master like Tony.

  In fact, the party was an appropriately auspicious occasion for him to break the news of an opportunity that could vastly benefit both of them.

  ‘It’s early days, and I could be getting ahead of myself, but I think I might – might, okay? – be on to a supplier.’

  They were sitting in a horse-shoe booth in the main lounge, Stevie gulping a pint of lager, Tony sipping malt poured from a bottle of twenty-one-year-old stuff that his host had presented to him. Glen was standing close by, holding a can of Irn-Bru. He didn’t drink alcohol and he didn’t much like pubs, but Stevie had invited him along. As ever, he blended into the background: saw more than was seen, listened far more than he spoke. He may have been the only observer to read the true significance of Stevie’s gift to Tony, having previously heard him disparagingly refer to whisky as ‘an old man’s drink’.

  ‘A supplier? Of what?’ Tony inquired, trying to sound only mildly curious.