In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

‘It could take a while.’

  ‘I have some money, and I want to know.’

  Darian had heard that sort of thing before, an investigation started while the raw emotion of loss pained someone into desperate action, but the hurt dulled and people began to move on with their lives. No matter how much a person meant to them, a life can’t be lived standing still waiting for justice to be done. People wanted to know more about a dead relative, their financial affairs, their relationship with a woman who shouldn’t have been in the will. People could be passionate with grief, but that’s rarely a long-term motivation, and clients often grew out of the investigation they’d started and cancelled the contract early. They wanted the battles of their past in the history books, not raging alongside them. Sholto called it the distance clause, the dead becoming less important the smaller they got in the rear-view mirror.

  He said, ‘How long will you be mourning him?’

  ‘Just as long as he would have wanted me to. No looking back, remember. I won’t be wearing black into my thirties, but I won’t forget him either, which is why I won’t let you walk away from this when the going gets tough. You’re going to find the person responsible; I’ll make sure of that.’

  She gave him the names of some of Moses’ friends and the few people she knew worked with him. It was an unimpressive mob, some of whom were familiar to Darian and most could be safely ruled out straight away. Petty conmen that had found their way into Douglas Independent Research’s files, low rate and non-violent, the only money they were interested in the easy kind. Killing a man did not make for easy cash. That left him with a shortlist to investigate. Armed with that, Darian walked to the front door. Maeve opened it for him, the two of them standing face to face, holding eye contact.

  She said, ‘I wonder why you wanted to know when I would stop mourning.’

  Darian walked out of the flat.

  8

  BEFORE FOLLOWING THE trail of breadcrumbs Maeve had thrown his way, Darian had to bake a few of his own. The first trick in avoiding the police was to get all the information he could about their investigation into Moses Guerra’s murder. It had been handled by DI Corey, which meant Cnocaid station, so he called up his senior contact there.

  A good investigator makes sure they have someone in each of the six police stations in Challaid, preferably more than one. Darian didn’t often pay them to talk, it’s important you understand how it worked. There were rare occasions where money changed hands, but typically it was a favour for a favour, one scratched back for another. Darian did things for these cops, typically gathered information they couldn’t reach, which helped their own investigations along, so they did the same for him.

  His senior person at Cnocaid was DC Cathy Draper, a woman in her early forties and one of his earliest and most willing contacts. Her story is for another time. For now we’ll mention only her very small role in the story of Moses Guerra, meeting Darian to provide information, and to gain a favour from him by so doing.

  Meeting with DC Draper was an elaborate operation, Darian assumed because she worked in the same station as Corey so had more reason to be careful than most. It was early in the morning, half past six, and she wanted to meet in the back office of Siren’s record store on MacUspaig Road, just north of Sutherland Square, so it was only a fifteen-minute walk from home for Darian. It meant he had to get up at an ungodly hour. The fact she wanted to meet there, the back office of a record store run by an incalculably dubious former record company boss, was cause for surprise, but not necessarily concern. Cops were entitled to keep strange friends, too. She would have parked out front on the long, shop-filled street, just about the only time of day you could find a spot in the whole Bank district. Darian cut down the alley from the back and went in the side door, next to the entrance for From Cambalu, a clothing store that sold the finest, handcrafted items twelve-year-old Indonesians could produce.

  She was there ahead of him, in a windowless storeroom filled with plastic containers, looking nervy, a small, tanned woman with short, dark hair. Her arched eyebrows and downturned mouth gave the look of a constant frown, and mood often matched appearance. Contacts all had to be handled differently. Someone like Vinny was a pal; you could joke with him, chat about shared interests and family matters, have your meetings somewhere you could get a drink and relax. Others, like Draper, had to be handled like a bottle of nitro-glycerine, so there was no sarcasm in his voice when he said, ‘Thanks for meeting me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be sniffing around Corey.’

  He had mentioned that he needed to know about Moses Guerra to make sure she was armed with the right information when they met. ‘I’m not; he’s finished with the Guerra case. I know Corey took over the murder investigation and didn’t get very far, and I need to know exactly where he did go with it.’

  ‘It’s still his case and you’re still taking a risk.’

  ‘It isn’t through choice, trust me.’

  ‘I should be staying away from the bastard, too.’

  ‘You work with him.’

  ‘He’ll crush you, if he finds out. That’s his way with people who go against him. You and your family. Anyone he can get at you through, he will. He’s smart, as well as dangerous.’

  ‘I’m not going after Corey, just whoever killed Guerra. The worst I’ll do with Corey is annoy him, not attack him. I need to know what he found out about the killing.’

  She sighed but didn’t try to discourage him further; it wasn’t in her best interests. ‘He didn’t find much, but he doesn’t always look for much. He has his own priorities. I know Guerra was a lifetime criminal, but he stood close enough to legality to get away with it. They found connections to very clean financial people that didn’t go far. They decided it was probably the girlfriend. She knew about the money and wanted some.’

  ‘They talk to anyone interesting?’

  ‘Nobody in Guerra’s building heard anything, and they don’t think it started inside the flat. Might have been someone jumped him outside when he arrived home and he ran for it, ended up dead in an alley when that same someone caught him up a few streets over. He didn’t get far. There was a waiter, the restaurant backs onto the alley, he said the body wasn’t there when he went out for a smoke, but he must have been lying, body would have been there for a couple of hours by then.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it from me. I wasn’t on the team. I’m not one of Corey’s people. He has his own group in the anti-corruption unit, cops that are all loyal to him. Mostly younger detectives, they owe him their rapid rise. Even when they’re moved out of his unit to other stations or leave the force, they’re still Corey’s detectives before they’re Challaid Police Force’s.’

  ‘It’s not a lot.’

  ‘It’s more than you’ll get from anyone else. No one inside his unit will talk to you. They’re a team, and you’re an outsider. They don’t even talk to other cops, so your family connection won’t help. Corey will hammer you for sticking your nose in, and he’ll hammer me twice for helping.’

  ‘I know. I owe you one.’

  ‘A big one.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The thought of another favour acquired seemed to satisfy DC Draper and she left through the front of the record store. Darian left by the side door and went to the office, first one there, for another day of watching warehouses that had nothing to show him.

  A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE CALEDONIAN EXPEDITION – SCOTLAND 1698

  Just two months before the voyage, at that point referred to as the Darien scheme, was due to depart from Scotland, the Sutherland Bank made a late decision to invest heavily in what had before been viewed as a fanciful lowland idea. The then chairman of the bank, Lord Niall Sutherland, added significant funds and four additional ships to the five planned. He also appointed Alexander Barton, a man previously accused of piracy but who claimed to have been a privateer, to lead the expedition with Thomas Drummond. The nine ships left in 1698.

  T
here remains much debate about what happened when the ships arrived in what was to become New Edinburgh. It is known with certainty that two weeks after arrival Drummond was dead, and Alexander Barton was declared commander of the remaining group. It was he who made the decision that the previously chosen site of New Edinburgh was inappropriate for the group’s intentions, and that they should move inland. At this point the differing intentions of the original group of five ships sent by the Company of Scotland and the four sent by the Sutherland Bank became clearer. The Company of Scotland had sought to take and hold the land that would allow the passage of goods from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with ports on either side of the narrow stretch, while the Sutherland Bank had given Barton and his chosen crew orders to take much more.

  The exact movements of Barton and his men in the months that followed is still unclear, but that they survived by establishing a defensive base further inland while ranging out to pillage local villages seems clear. While the settlers from the original five ships who stayed behind faced starvation and disease in New Edinburgh and saw their numbers dwindle fast, Barton and his men expanded their land grab, and gained new members from the indigenous population. While the stories of the time suggested those local Indians joined with them as a preferred alternative to Spanish rule, there is better evidence, in the form of large graves, to suggest Barton and his men gave them little choice. By the time Barton returned to New Edinburgh he had a small army, well fed and with a stable base inland, which they named Fort Sutherland, and had reached the Pacific coast and founded Port Isobel, named after his own wife. It is not disputed that they could have returned to New Edinburgh sooner with food and supplies, but chose not to. They argued this was impractical and would have put their own success at risk and by the time they did return the population of New Edinburgh had dropped to fewer than a hundred.

  From this point forward the remaining members of the original five ships joined forces with Barton, accepting that his ruthless ways were their only opportunity for survival. The build-up of his army continued until barely a village covering the route from east coast to west wasn’t under their control, as men were pressed into service. The New Edinburgh project, that was to have been the centrepiece of the original plan, was practically abandoned by Barton. He led his group from coast to coast, and although many lives were lost in the jungle it was, many said, fear of Barton that pushed them on. By the time the second expedition arrived, seven more ships, this time all funded by the Sutherland Bank in Challaid, Barton had achieved what he set out to do. On his return to Scotland he was knighted by the King in Edinburgh and lived well, the Sutherland family rewarding him generously. That he was successful only because of his cruelty towards the local population was written out of history at the time.

  More ships sailed to Caledonia, bringing more settlers and boosting the population of Scots. New Edinburgh was developed and linked with Port Isobel on the Pacific coast via Fort Sutherland. Towns and villages were built along the line of what would become the Caledonian trade route. Scotland would expand throughout Panama and north into Costa Rica and the south of Nicaragua, creating what we now know as Caledonia. In the centuries since 1698 the bloody role of the Sutherland Bank and Alexander Barton have been romanticised, as has the often shocking behaviour of Scottish troops in Caledonia, but the links forged in those early years remain.

  9

  THE DOWNSIDE OF hiding his clandestine work from Sholto was that he had to spend all day on the Murdoch warehouse case. But working the Guerra case at night meant seeing the scene as it had been a month before, when Moses stumbled into it to his death. Darian started at the block of flats on Seachran Drive where Moses had lived. It’s a narrow and short road, made skinnier by the cars parked there, long rows of flats along both sides. It’s in Bakers Moor so we’re not talking about the heights of luxury here, but it’s a neat enough street, the four-storey buildings relatively modern and well kept.

  It was after ten o’clock, earlier than Moses had been killed but still dark and cold enough to make sure conditions matched. DC Draper had suggested Moses was jumped on the doorstep, probably getting out of his car, and had run for his life, not quite fast enough. Darian stood and looked at the door to the building Moses had called home and understood why he hadn’t gone that way. A gate leading to steps leading to a locked door, a man without a second to waste would have to go another way. From the flat where he had lived to the alley where he died was a five-minute walk, two minutes if you were running to try to keep up with the life that was seeping out of you. Darian tried to track the route a man with death at his heels would use.

  He walked to the corner and across the road to confront the first conundrum. If Moses was just looking to create distance then he would go over the fences and round the backs of the houses there, cut across their gardens and save time. That meant running into unlit gardens, going where nobody would see him, where the potential killer would have no witnesses to his crime. Surely if he thought he was going to die he would stay in the bright areas where someone would spot them and help him. Darian shook his head; he needed to think like Moses, the career criminal. What was he carrying that night that he might want to hide?

  Darian went through the gardens, trying to keep to the most logical route of a desperate runner, keeping his head down so the occupants wouldn’t realise a young man was skulking across their property and think they were about to be burgled. Now he was on Somerset Street, and the alley where Moses bled to death was in view, but so were better places to run. Again, Moses had chosen the one route where he could be sure he wouldn’t be seen, by the attacker and by other witnesses. He had passed many buildings on the way where he could have found help.

  The alley was unremarkable but for the fact that a man had died there a month before. It’s a narrow stretch behind buildings, a shortcut from Somerset Street to Morti Road, but it was mostly a place to store bins, boxes, crates, filth and rats. It was a place to hide, not a place to run. Darian walked down to where the body had been found, far enough away from either end to have been missed by people walking or driving past on adjoining streets. Not so well hidden that someone standing in the alley could possibly miss it.

  ‘I must have missed it.’

  Darian and the waiter were standing in the alleyway. He was in his mid-twenties, dark skin and dark eyes, nervous about this conversation. He was wiry and his movements were all sharp and jerky. His name was Benigno Holguin and he was taking his ten-minute break to speak to Darian. It took five of those minutes for Darian to explain who he was.

  ‘Are all the lights that are on now on at two o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So if you stood here...’

  ‘I did stand here, for my cigarette. I come out with bags for the bin, I put them in the bin, I stop here to have cigarette, two, three minutes, I go inside.’

  ‘So if the body was there you would have seen it, you couldn’t have missed it.’

  Holguin shrugged.

  Darian said, ‘They think he may have been dead before two o’clock, so the body should have been there.’

  ‘I said this to the policemen, the body was not there, it must have come just after, I don’t know. They must have their time wrong. I thought this was finished.’

  Darian could guess why he was so worked up. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘El Roble, Costa Rica.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Ten months. I have two months to go, I said that to the detective, he said this was finished and it was okay.’

  Holguin was two months away from a fast-track dual passport, Caledonian and Scottish. Anyone from two of the old colonies, Panama and Costa Rica, can get a dual passport after twelve months working in Scotland. Used to be you just had to live here for a year but some bored politicians with fear to spread got that changed to twelve months of legitimate employment.

  That was going to change again soon enough, a clamour to keep peopl
e who wanted in out, blame them for things that couldn’t yet be their fault. It would go to two years of employment. It was already much harder if you came from Nicaragua, because we only ever had the south of it, it was the last colony we captured and the first we gave up and the people spent the entire time in between fighting for their freedom.

  For every good-hearted soul we sent across there was a murderous thug like Gregor Kidd or a scheming conman like Joseph Gunn, dark stories too long to tell here. Knowing what Kidd did to the people of Sambu you might wonder why any immigrant would want to live in a city that named one of its largest streets after him. The way we treated people in Caledonia, many think they should all get a dual passport if they want them, but it’s more complicated than that. Once he had a Scottish passport Holguin could go anywhere in the EU, he didn’t have to stick around if he didn’t want to, so those tighter limits were on the way. He was two months from all of Europe opening its arms to him as a fellow citizen, and a man like DI Corey could put a stop to that.

  Darian said, ‘You couldn’t have missed it, could you? Come out and looked the other way the whole time? It was near the wall so...’

  ‘No, I don’t think... No, I am not blind. I would have seen it, but it wasn’t there. They say he died before then, I say no, he must have come here after. He was not here. Why is this not over?’

  Darian tried again to reassure him, not wanting the waiter to go running for comfort to Corey or any other cop from the anti-corruption unit. The longer they were in the dark about Darian’s work the fatter his slim chance of success got. He said, ‘It is over, it is, I’m just trying to work out everything the police worked out. I don’t think there’s any chance of them wanting to speak to you again. Thank you, Benigno.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Darian let Benigno go back into the restaurant, working for less than minimum wage for a year because Challaid pretended he would be rewarded at the end of that time. Men like Corey were itching to use his vulnerability against him. His status as a Caledonian was a weakness. Challaid only existed so our boats could trade and raid with the Scandinavians and Irish, so they were our first immigrants, then the Caledonians and the Polish and anyone else we could make money from. They gave to our city and it mostly took from them.