Bred in the Bone

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘I says get your da,’ he growled. ‘Move.’

  ‘That’s no’ nice, you,’ Squirrelly interjected. ‘We’d like to speak to your daddy please,’ he said to Catherine with a patronising smirk.

  ‘He’s not here,’ she told them, putting down the potato peeler and reaching for a dish towel to dry her hands. ‘Nobody is.’

  Cadaver took a moment to process this.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he replied. ‘We’ll just take a wee pew here and wait for him. Come on,’ he said to Squirrelly. ‘The lassie’s getting a brew on. Two sugar and milk in mine.’

  They both helped themselves to a seat.

  ‘Where is he?’ Cadaver asked. ‘Will he be long?’

  ‘A wee while, yes,’ she said tersely. ‘He’s in hospital. He collapsed yesterday. Doctors say it was exhaustion. Personally, I think he’s been suffering from parasites.’

  She felt her voice waver as she spoke this last, her indignation driving the thought but her fear sapping its vocal conviction.

  ‘Aye, boo hoo,’ Cadaver responded. ‘Where’s the fuckin’ money?’

  ‘Here, come on you,’ Squirrelly reprimanded, though he was giggling as he did so. He turned to Catherine. ‘Sorry about the language, doll. That’s pure out of order, so it is. And you about to make the pair of us a cuppa tea as well.’

  He was smiling, trying to look friendly, but in it Catherine felt an even greater sense of humiliation. It was worse than being merely patronised: he was underlining her powerlessness, rubbing it in as he smirked and giggled and sniffed.

  ‘Never mind the tea. She knows what we’re here for. And you better have it, hospital or nae hospital.’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she assured him.

  ‘See? The lassie’s brand new,’ said Squirrelly. ‘He’s murder, in’t he, darlin’? Got to forgive him, but he’s a bit on edge cause he’s got the cold. He’s feeling a little horse, you know what I mean? Or do you neigh?’

  He let this out in a whinny. He did this every time he saw her, crowbarring some kind of horse-related jokes into whatever he had to say.

  She felt her face redden in hatred.

  Something amused Cadaver about this and he emitted a guttural, wheezing laugh, like the winning gag on a TB ward comedy night.

  ‘Two sugars as well for me,’ he said without looking at her, instead sharing a smirk with Squirrelly.

  ‘Haw, say please you, ya’n ignorant tube.’

  ‘Please,’ he acquiesced. It was more calculatedly insulting than when he was merely spitting staccato commands, and her hatred grew accordingly.

  She turned her back so that they couldn’t see her face, close to tears, her cheeks burning, and found herself reaching for two mugs from the tree largely because it was a disguise for the real reason she had faced away. The next track started on the cassette player: no less than her favourite song. She tried to concentrate on the music, let it take her somewhere else.

  ‘Oh, and if you’ve any Abernethy biscuits,’ Squirrelly suggested, hauling her back to the humiliation of the here and now. It prompted a wheeze from Cadaver and a snottery guffaw of delight from Squirrelly utterly disproportionate to the remark; some private joke between them, her exclusion from it part of the humour, part of the sport.

  She made them each a mug of tea, her hand shaking as she poured the kettle, now more from rage than fear.

  They were sitting there, in her family’s kitchen, relaxing like they owned the place while the man who truly did was in hospital – put there by these people. Squirrelly had his back to where she stood spooning sugar at the slate worktop. He was sitting at ninety degrees to Cadaver, the pair of them now talking like she wasn’t even there, as though she were a waitress or a skivvy.

  The arrogance.

  The complacency.

  They will try to burn you down, went the song on the cassette. But what they say can make you strong . . .

  She was doing this. She knew she wouldn’t be able to reload fast enough after the first shot, once the element of surprise had expired, but she had deduced that she wouldn’t have to.

  She placed their mugs in front of them on the kitchen table, along with a packet of Rich Tea biscuits. Neither of them said thanks, continuing to chat away like she was invisible. Squirrelly was telling a story about something that had happened in a pub the night before, acting like every line of neddish patter in an overheard exchange was Oscar Wilde. Cadaver nodded appreciation, emitting his consumptive laugh every so often.

  ‘I’ll just get you what you’re owed and you can be on your way,’ Catherine announced, ahead of leaving the room.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, hen,’ said Squirrelly. ‘This place is spiffing for tea. What’s it like for lunches?’

  She went to the living room where she had stowed Harriet’s bag. The cash envelope was sitting inside it, above the pistol, which was primed and loaded. She took them both out, removed another dart and practised the manoeuvre. She tried it first with the left hand, the gun in her right, but it felt weak and awkward. She transferred the gun and tried with her right hand. Yes. That felt strong. That would do it.

  She carried the bag back into the kitchen, barely eliciting a glance as she returned to her previous place at the worktop, between the fridge and the range.

  She could still back out of this. They would never know what was in the bag. She wasn’t past the point of no return. But as she reached for the envelope full of the money that was tearing her family’s lives apart and listened to Squirrelly’s sneery nasal laughter at her kitchen table she realised the true point of no return would be the one whereby they walked out of here and her chance to act was gone.

  She placed the envelope down on the table roughly halfway between the pair of them. Neither reached for it, another arrogant gesture of confidence, further conveying the message that they were in no hurry and would leave only when it suited them.

  She turned away from the table and reached into the bag with her left hand, retrieving a dart from her pocket with her right, her body blocking Cadaver’s line of sight to what she was holding.

  This was it. She took in a silent breath, large and long but not sharp, then turned on her heel and drove the dart between Squirrelly’s shoulder blades as they stuck up above the seat-back. She struck with a downward stabbing motion, the point thrusting through the synthetic fabric of his tracksuit top like paper and embedding itself right to the chamber.

  She then took a step back from the table and raised the gun with her left hand, holding it by the barrel as she brought up her right to grip the stock. She hesitated for only a fraction of a second to steady her aim, keeping her focus on the target of Cadaver’s trunk, consciously avoiding looking into his eyes. He reacted with surprising speed in getting to his feet, but had barely begun to push the heavy wooden chair back from beneath him when she pulled the trigger. The dart’s coloured tail sprung up suddenly upon his left breast like a corsage.

  It was as he stood staring at the dart that she realised she had thought through how to strike but neglected to consider an exit strategy. Her position had allowed her to exploit the vulnerability of them both being seated and Squirrelly having his back to her, but as he climbed also to his feet, she saw that she had painted herself into a corner. Squirrelly was between her and the hall, Cadaver well placed to block her escape to the back door. How long did these things take to work? She hadn’t even checked the strength or dosage: they could have been optimised for bringing down a distressed Highland terrier.

  Right at that moment however, neither of them seemed intent on pursuing her. Squirrelly was grabbing around his back with both hands, trying in vain to reach between his shoulder blades, while a darkening shadow on Cadaver’s charcoal trousers betrayed that he had wet himself. She understood: she thought he’d got up to come after her, but he had in fact been trying to flee, because he’d caught one glance and thought she was holding a real gun.

  Squirrelly dropped, smacking his head off the slate w
orktop on his way to the floor. Cadaver slumped back into the chair that he had only partly slid away, his legs evidently having given out, his face drained and his expression disoriented. His head must be swimming, she assumed, as he was grabbing at his upper arm even though she had shot him in the chest. He then rolled over as though turning on his side in bed, and fell to the floor, the chair toppling beneath him. Catherine heard him gurgle and splutter for a few moments, then he was still.

  Paralysis

  Jasmine didn’t know how long she was unconscious. It felt like everything was blank only for a moment, but the coming-round part took ages, as though her senses were reluctant to report for duty given what they were going to be asked to deal with.

  She opened and closed her eyes several times, her surroundings swirling sickeningly in the first few instances. There was a ringing in her ears and a host of different kinds of pain: shooting, throbbing, aching, searing.

  She lifted her head and saw that the man in the overalls was sitting in a crouch against the opposite wall of the van, rocking with its motion. He looked early fifties, maybe older: portly but imposing, strangely baby-faced features above a jowly jawline, like someone who wasn’t genetically built to carry fat but had piled it on nonetheless.

  ‘You fuckin’ sit still and don’t make a fuckin’ sound, right? You fuckin’ make a sound, you get another fuckin’ slap, right?’

  His eyes blazed with intent as he spoke, giving the impression he’d prefer it if she didn’t comply. There was no danger of that. She was shaking with fear, shivering like she’d been dunked in the North Sea. Nothing in her was ready to defy this person. She would do whatever was required to prevent him from hitting her again.

  A slap, he called what he’d done.

  Her face was beginning to swell, her lip leading the charge. She could feel blood stuck to her cheeks and taste it in her mouth. Her tongue probed a ravaged section of gum, springing back like she had licked a battery. At least one tooth was gone, possibly two. She suspected she may have swallowed them.

  Amid so much other pain, she was still able to feel a sting too. They must have been on her even before she got to Darroch’s address, and she had been so intent upon her surveillance that she had failed to notice that she was the one being tailed. She thought of his constant yakking into his mobile. He was getting instruction all the way, maybe before he had even left his flat.

  Darroch had led her into a trap. Adding insult to multiple injury, he had made himself an easy mark, implying that he or his confederates didn’t rate her detective skills enough to have faith that she wouldn’t lose him on the follow.

  She had no idea how long they travelled. She had a watch on but didn’t dare look at it, didn’t dare do anything that the pudgy man in the overalls might not like. She felt the van brake and accelerate, swaying as it cornered. She heard the hum of engines as vehicles passed outside, brief pulses of oncoming traffic and longer rumbles of cars overtaking.

  For all she knew they could have been going around in a big loop. She could see nothing.

  At one point she could hear the voices of pedestrians outside while the van was stationary, presumably stopped at lights. She thought for half a second about shouting for help or banging on the walls. She looked up at her travelling companion and saw him staring back. It felt like he could read her mind. She found herself shaking her head as though in answer to an unvoiced accusation: I’m not planning to make any noise.

  Please don’t hit me again.

  Please don’t hit me.

  Artefacts

  It was impossibly calm and quiet where Anthony sat, the sound of turning pages amplified by being the only affront to the silence of the room, though even that noise was swallowed by the insulation of a thousand leather-bound volumes lining the walls. There was no reverberation, no sound from outside, and a stillness to the air as though even the motes of dust had been ordered and alphabetised.

  He could hardly imagine a greater contrast to the chaos of the station, where several phones were always ringing and voices constantly raised merely to stay above the din of each other. In this chamber at the Procurator Fiscal’s offices he felt like he was sealed off from the world, but inescapably prominent in his thoughts was the fact that he had been sealed off along with Adrienne.

  It occurred to him that this was the first time they had been alone in a room together since that night. That they had been here for an hour before he realised this had to be a good sign, given that it wasn’t any ordinary room: it was like an awkwardness stress-test environment. Granted, they had some compelling reading matter to distract them, so he couldn’t gauge for sure what was going on between them in this sustained silence. Did this mean they were comfortable in each other’s company, or were they each immersing themselves in the task at hand because it helped them pretend like the other one wasn’t there?

  He couldn’t speak for Adrienne, but he was happy she was here. Apart from anything else, he needed some solidarity right now. The sense of complicity made what he was doing feel a little less like career suicide, though maybe this only meant that it was a suicide pact instead.

  He glanced up at the walls and bid himself a wry smile. Maybe there was another reason they called him Beano: he spent so much time in print. So if he was going out, he was going out his way: sitting in a library, cramming at a desk, the fast-track graduate hitting the books and fast-tracking himself right out the door.

  It was an unusual feeling, to knowingly pursue something even though he was aware that it would get him in serious trouble if the boss found out. Anthony had never done anything wanton in his life. As a kid he’d always worked hard, learned his spelling, got his sums right, done his homework, listened in class, never answered back. But sitting here right now he understood that he hadn’t done those things because he was afraid of getting a telling off from the teacher. He had done them because that was how he was brought up. This was about getting his sums right. It was about finding the correct answer, and he was moulded to do that in a way that deferred his consideration of consequences to the point of negligence.

  It was easy for him, though. If he got bagged because of this then fuck da police: he’d move on. He’d moved on from worse. He’d be mightily angry about it, sure, but he wasn’t gambling with anybody else’s chips. Adrienne, by contrast, was a single mother with two kids to provide for.

  ‘Do you think this makes us maverick cops?’ he had asked her on the short drive over here.

  ‘No, I think it makes us ex-cops if we’re not extremely careful,’ she replied, leaving no doubt that she was aware of the stakes.

  As per McLeod’s request, Dominic Wilson had looked out the records of the Teddy Sheehan prosecution, retrieving the files from the PF’s equivalent of the morgue. Anthony was aware that it was not a small favour. There was something between Wilson and McLeod, some quiet bond of trust, the confidentiality of this undertaking reflected in his also granting them this windowless chamber to peruse the documents. Nonetheless, the PF’s office was as gossipy and leaky as any cop shop, and it was hard to do anything out of the ordinary without somebody taking notice. You never knew who was watching, and you never knew who they’d tell.

  There hadn’t been a murder trial per se. Teddy Sheehan’s lawyer had submitted a guilty plea on his client’s behalf at the hearing following his hundred-and-ten-day lie-in after being charged. Subsequent hearings had been to determine the severity of the crime and the minimum term to be served under the statutory life sentence. The materials Dom Wilson had fished out were what would have formed the basis of the prosecution had there been a not guilty plea and the case gone to trial. Consequently, many of the documents were duplicates of the ones Anthony had been looking for back at Govan nick. Once again, Drummond’s efforts to erase the evidence had been thwarted by the existence of a remotely stored copy.

  There were police statements, interview statements and, of course, the confession. It was tempting to skip to that first, but given that
it was likely to be the least reliable document in the box, Anthony decided it would actually be most instructive to read it last. Just like a live case, it was important to put together both a chronology of the investigation and a chronology of the events, developing a wider picture so that every piece of evidence could be valued in context.

  Julie Muir’s body had been found on the Sunday morning by Capletmuir resident Malcolm Vickers, who was out walking his dog. It was discovered among a waist-high crop of wild garlic, evidently dragged there out of sight. Mr Vickers rushed home and called the police.

  Bob Cairns and Mitchell Drummond were first on the scene. They had happened to be in the area attending an incident in nearby Gallowhaugh.

  There were crime-scene photographs, black-and-white ten by eights. Anthony spotted these as he lifted the document that had been on top of them, glimpsing enough to recognise what they were before concealing them again. Tentatively, reluctantly, and feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic, he uncovered them once more and forced himself to look.

  To his relief, he was largely spared her face. She was lying on her back, her head turned to one side, her long hair draped over her features. There were close-ups of the marks on her neck, the tight pattern of bruising and abrasions. These were easier to look at: they were just skin, just shapes. They could be anybody. It was the personal details that always got to him, the notes of uniqueness still sounding out through the cacophony of white noise that murder made as it turned the individual human form into anonymous and interchangeable shapes. It was the stories suggested by an unusual pair of shoes, an esoteric tattoo, a striking piece of jewellery. In Julie’s case, it was a ring. Her hand was resting on her chest, like a virgin in a medieval painting, drawing Anthony’s attention to how out of place this olde-worlde-looking item seemed against her trendy clothing.

  According to the confession, Teddy Sheehan encountered Julie Muir on the pathway adjacent to the railway line, close to where she was found. He had gone out for a walk because it was a dry night, though not so dry back at home, where his sister was reportedly asleep on the settee having necked half a bottle of vodka. She was frequently asleep at that time, the statement said, though she would often wake up and continue drinking until passing out again or until the bottle was finished, whichever came first.