In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

  ‘You probably know a lot of cops, don’t you, Sorley’s brother?’

  There was a sneer in her voice and he had to chase it out fast or lose the conversation. ‘This will help you. I’m not doing it to help you, that’s a side effect, but I’m giving you a warning. DI Corey has arrested Cummins and he’s going to charge him with murdering Moses Guerra. Cummins is linked to you through money, through his motive, which means you might find yourself in a courtroom.’

  This time her silence was contemplative, not dismissive. This was bad news and it was taking its time to go down. There was a glass of whisky on the bar in front of her, a few drips left. She picked it up and emptied it, put the glass back down.

  ‘Corey’s been looking for an angle to take my scalp for months. He has a particular objection to women.’

  ‘His unit doesn’t cover what you do.’

  She looked at Darian and smiled. This time it was mocking and perhaps rather pitying. ‘You might be Sorley’s brother, but you don’t know the world like he does. Corey’s unit covers whatever Corey wants it to cover, and he wants it to cover me so tight I can’t breathe.’

  ‘So, Cummins?’

  ‘He paid us back. He owed eighteen and a half thousand, and he had time to pay. We leaned on him a little, not a lot. Not for the whole lot, just a part of it. Suddenly he returns every penny.’

  Vivienne stopped because the barman had emerged from the back. He moved towards her, saw the look she gave him and turned like a gale had blown him sideways. He marched back to wherever he had come from.

  She went on, ‘He paid in cash. As far as we were concerned that was the end of the matter. The debt was on the books, a registered lender. If he’s putting the word around that I, or anyone else, forced him to get the money or suggested he steal it or kill for it then he’s a lying little shit with a short lifespan.’

  Darian said, ‘He’s not saying that. He’s denying he had anything to do with it, but it doesn’t look clever for him. The evidence says he killed Moses Guerra to get the money to pay you off.’

  ‘Evidence has a habit of saying what you want other people to hear. Your family should know that.’

  ‘But he paid you the money in cash?’

  ‘He did, and it would have been a day or two after Guerra last breathed out as well.’

  ‘You should expect a visit from DI Corey then.’

  ‘I will. You were right to deliver the warning, but don’t think this means I owe you a favour. Say hello to your brother, and tell him to remember what I said to him the last time we parted.’

  Darian didn’t ask what that was; the tone suggested Sorley should remember and if he didn’t he was in trouble. It was enough to make him pause and ask, ‘Did you ever work with Moses Guerra?’

  ‘No, and I better not hear you repeating the suggestion that I have.’

  Darian turned and walked out of Sigurds. The door banged shut behind him and he was on the uneven cobbles of Caol Lane again, no brighter than when he had gone in but as sunny as it was going to get all day. He walked back to Mormaer Station and took the train to work.

  19

  DARIAN SAT AT his desk at the window of the office and stared out into the street. Gallowglass was nowhere to be seen. The Cummins case was in the bag, there was no more intimidation for Corey’s man to throw around, no more unwelcome investigation to silence. It didn’t feel right, but it didn’t have to. A man was guilty and that man was going to pay for it, so the job was done.

  Sholto was at his desk, writing out an update for Glendan about the activities spotted at the Murdoch warehouses. There was little to report, but he could spool almost nothing out into six or seven pages and make himself look terribly busy. Darian did much of the work on Murdoch, but Sholto wrote the reports. Had it been left to Darian the wording would have been unhelpfully honest, telling Glendan there was no criminality to find there. Sholto kept the possibility alive because that was what the client wanted, and getting what they wanted would persuade them to extend the investigation.

  The stairs leading up to the office were bare wood and Sholto’s desk being next to the door made it easy for him to hear anyone approach. That was deliberate; he didn’t like people sneaking up on him. Occasionally he would hear what he thought were steps and then nothing would happen. That always got the same response, a pause to listen to silence and then, ‘Must have been Bodach Gaoith.’

  This time, at half past midday, there was a knock at the office door following the footsteps. Sholto got up and answered it because Darian appeared to be dreaming. It was DC Alasdair MacDuff. Sholto recognised him.

  ‘What can we do for you, Detective?’

  MacDuff entered the office and stood midway between the two desks looking uncomfortable. He was young, but he didn’t have the brashness Darian would have expected from a protégé of Folan Corey.

  MacDuff said, ‘We’ve charged Randle Cummins with murdering Moses Guerra and stealing money from him. We thought it would be right to tell you. Chances are you’ll be called as witnesses, so you’ll have to explain how you got involved in the whole thing. I don’t know if that’ll be difficult for you.’

  Sholto paused while he tried to identify sarcasm. His detector wasn’t great but there was none to find. MacDuff wasn’t Corey. Sholto said, ‘It’s good news that you’ve charged him, good, good news.’

  ‘He hasn’t confessed yet, but that might just be a matter of time. The evidence is piling up, especially the money side of it. It all fits, so we’ll get a conviction.’

  ‘Well, it’s good of you to come round and tell us, we appreciate that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you were involved so... And you should expect to be called as witnesses. Anyway, I’ll let you get on with your work. I’m going to pick up lunch at the takeaway downstairs.’

  MacDuff left and Sholto looked across at Darian. He had turned back to the window, looking out at Cage Street and the few shoppers walking by, mostly using it as a shortcut to somewhere better.

  Sholto said, ‘Go on then, tell me why this isn’t good enough for you.’

  Darian turned and looked at him. He had to answer Sholto’s frustration. ‘He seems guilty, but a lot of people aren’t what they seem. I don’t think Cummins has the wit or the fury to kill, not even with the wolves scratching at his door.’

  ‘You don’t know him well enough to know that. And he confessed.’

  ‘Not to anyone that matters, and not sober. He confessed when he was drunk and trying to sound like a big man in a private conversation. We’ve both heard plenty of people talking crap when they’ve got the drink splashing around inside them.’

  ‘The money, Darian, the money. How does he pay off that stonking great debt to those thugs without stealing it from the man he killed?’

  ‘I know. The money.’

  ‘You’re judging a book by its cover. Cummins is a small man in every way. You want a killer to be big and impressive and striking because murder is all those things, but maybe he did just go round there to mug Moses and things got out of hand, he panicked and pulled the knife. It’s nice to think that the man you helped catch was a killer who might strike again and so you’ve saved someone by stopping him, but getting justice for Moses will have to be enough.’

  Sholto was often smarter than he sought or was given credit for. He could be wimpish and old-fashioned and he often seemed motivated by a desire to make as much money as possible by doing as little real work as possible, but the embers of the fire that had pushed him to be a cop in the first place were still warm. Thirty years of chasing after the worst of Challaid had given him instincts worth following.

  Darian had to get out of the office, so he went to the south docks again to watch the warehouses. There was nothing to see, but he didn’t care. Darian wanted to stare into space.

  Summary report: Dockside Police Station, 40 Docklands Street, Whisper Hill, Challaid, CH9 4SS

  Summary of reported incidents at 13 Long Walk Lane (Misgearan) for January<
br />
  Jan 1st – Fight started in bar, spilled out to lane. At least fifteen involved, dispersed when police arrived. Two arrested – James MacPherson (25) William Armstrong (31). Attending officers – PC Vincent Reno, PC Philip Sutherland.

  Jan 2nd – Three men entered bar and attacked victim, hospitalising with serious injuries. Victim – Vasco Nunez (40). Possible revenge attack, Nunez identifying witness in previous night’s arrest of William Armstrong. No arrests. Note – William Armstrong younger brother of POI Vivienne Armstrong. Attending officers – Sgt Seamus MacRae, PC Carol Lis.

  Jan 8th – Knife fight in bar, two men injured. Two arrested and taken to The Machaon Hospital – David Carney (34), William Gow (23). Attending officers – PC Najida Azam, PC Zack Stuart.

  Jan 12th – Body of Ruby-Mae Short (20) found on railway tracks behind 13 Long Walk Lane. Miss Short seen drinking in bar with several unidentified people, male and female, earlier in evening. None of fellow drinkers identified. First attending officers – Sgt Seamus MacRae, PC Vincent Reno.

  Jan 23rd – Man dragged from building against will, taken away. Victim and perpetrators unidentified, motivation unclear. Probably crime, other witnesses in bar claimed it was a joke. One perpetrator described as ‘a giant’. Attending officers – PC Zack Stuart, PC Sam MacDonald.

  Jan 25th – Fight culminating in attempt to set fire to neighbouring building. All but one involved party had fled scene before police arrived. One arrest – James MacPherson (25). Attending officers – PC Vincent Reno, PC Philip Sutherland.

  20

  HE MUST HAVE taken the train to get up to Whisper Hill, although he couldn’t remember afterwards. It was destructive instinct that led him there. A young man who didn’t know what else to do with his heavy misery so he tried to drown it. If you wanted to kill a few brain cells with a bottle, there was nowhere better than Misgearan.

  Sandwiched between Fair Road and the train tracks there’s a narrow lane with a collection of shabby-looking buildings on either side. Number 13 is Misgearan, a drinking den with a reputation and a half. Long Walk Lane apparently got its name because so many drinking dens around the north docks were shut down during a crackdown in the fifties and the sailors had to walk or wobble over a mile to the lane for some booze. It’s well known for its drunken violence, but most of the crimes are never reported. The few the police hear about are because of the reputation that draws visitors and students to see if it’s as grim as the legends suggest, to test themselves against the sort of hard-core alcoholics to whom drinking the city dry is a serious aspiration, not a witticism. Innocent people don’t realise that you aren’t supposed to call the police. They also don’t realise that the police, particularly at Dockside station, use Misgearan as their own private club, and they’re not going to let the council shut it down, no matter how much our elected representatives on Sutherland Square would love to try.

  Darian had been there a few times before, usually to meet Vinny. He knew he’d be let in when he knocked on the side door. There were people out in the lane, there were always a few shuffling around, waiting for trouble to join them. He could go in the front and sit at the bar, but that wasn’t the sort of drinking he wanted. Being among other people and their noise, the inevitable fights breaking out, getting jostled and questioned, someone putting an arm round him and trying to lead him in song or tell him a long-dead joke, that wasn’t for him. Darian wanted to sit alone, in silence. That meant a private room and that meant knocking on the side door.

  He waited as a train clacked past loudly, invisible behind the corrugated fence. Darian knocked when he knew he would be heard, and the door opened within seconds. The woman looking back at him was short and in her sixties; Caillic Docherty had run the place for nearly twenty years. She had short brown hair that was thin enough to show scalp, deep frown lines and yellow teeth, glasses hanging from string around her neck. She remembered everyone, and who everyone drank with, so she would have known Darian was a friend of the police and wouldn’t have considered turning him away. She was a woman in possession of many secrets, and her job depended on her keeping them.

  ‘You wanting in?’

  ‘I am.’

  She nodded and held the door open for him. Experience had brought with it both the knowledge of who people were and the understanding of what people wanted. She said, ‘You after a room?’

  ‘Aye, and a half-bottle.’

  Every private room was tiny, little more than a box you could stand up in. There was a small, round table and two chairs, never more than that. People used them to drink miserably, and they were designed to be too small to allow misery the company it needed to turn violent.

  Docherty was back inside two minutes with a half-bottle of Uisge an Tuath, cheap whisky from a local distillery. Nobody went to Misgearan for the quality on offer. A night there tended to deliver an experience akin to being hit on the head with a shovel, and was only marginally more expensive. She put the bottle on the table; Darian passed her a twenty for that and the room and she left.

  Darian drank steadily and with commitment until the bottle was empty. He hadn’t spent the time thinking about anything because thinking wasn’t part of the mission. He got up and shoved past the table, opening the door. He wasn’t steady, but he wasn’t quite ready to fall over. He got out into the lane and moved through the small crowd without bumping into anyone, which could easily have led to a fight he wouldn’t win and injuries he wouldn’t quickly recover from. He got out onto Fair Road and started walking, not thinking a damn about where he was going. The streets of Whisper Hill and Earmam were all familiar; he never had a sense that the darkness of the night could trick him into a dangerous wrong turn.

  She opened the door and looked at him, at first uncertain of this man standing out in the corridor. Maeve took her time to compose herself before she said, ‘Darian. Can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to talk. We should talk. Can we?’

  He sounded drunk, although the walk to her flat had taken some of the weight from his tongue. Maeve held her door open and let him in. Darian had to make an effort to walk straight in a confined space, and the effort of dodging the walls showed. He later convinced himself she was amused by him turning up at her flat in the early hours of the morning pissed out of his skull, although he couldn’t actually remember something as subtle as the expression on her face, and drunk people tend to incorrectly assume they’re hilarious. Maeve would be an unusual woman to have been thrilled by the evil o’clock arrival of a drunk man she barely knew. She let him in, though, and they went through to the living area.

  Maeve said, ‘Take a seat.’

  Darian sat and looked round the room, taking it all in. He was either too drunk to notice any changes from his last visit or sober enough to recognise that there were none. It might be telling that he didn’t remember what she was wearing when he went round to her flat at two in the morning.

  He said, ‘They got someone. Randle Cummins. He knew Moses. They’re going to say he stabbed Moses and then stole money from the flat because he needed to clear a debt.’

  ‘They told me. A cop came round a few hours ago to let me know. He said you and your colleague were the ones who identified Cummins and proved his guilt, even though I don’t think he enjoyed giving you the credit. You said you would get the man who killed Moses and you did.’

  ‘Ha. Yeah. I said I would get him and I got someone. Wait, did I say I would get him? Did I not just say I would try?’

  ‘Okay, you tried and you got him.’

  ‘I went and I found him. We both did, me and Sholto. We talked to him and we tripped him up because he’s not clever, Cummins, not the sort who can talk his way out of bother. Can talk his way in and you lock the door behind him. He talked, but he never said he did it, not to us, and not to the cops either... I don’t think. Never said that.’

  ‘The detective told me he definitely did it.’

  ‘There is no definite, never is. There’s a chance, that’s
all it ever is really. Your man was killed and Cummins had the motive to do it and he knew where Moses lived and he would know how to get at him. It might be that easy. Like dropping all the pieces of a jigsaw on the floor and they all land in the right place for you to see the whole picture. It could happen, but what are the odds?’

  ‘Wait, do you think he didn’t do it?’

  Just at the point Maeve got interested in his drunken ramble, Darian hit the wall. The more he talked the more his jaw wanted to stiffen into a yawn, but he said, ‘I’m saying nothing is definite. If everything’s in the first place you look for it then you’re either really lucky or you don’t know what you’re looking at.’

  He had leaned back on the couch as he was speaking and tiredness was pushing his eyelids down. It was only when sleep wouldn’t take no for an answer that Darian realised how late it was, and that he must have got her out of her bed. He hadn’t intended to come here. It was unprofessional. It took a couple of seconds for him to realise his eyes were closed. He opened them sharply, and didn’t remember them closing again. He thought he heard Maeve saying goodnight.

  21

  HE OPENED HIS eyes and found dim sunlight stinging his eyes. Not as much light as he was used to, but any was too much. He blinked heavily, trying to ease the discomfort.

  ‘Morning, sunshine.’

  A female voice and that caused him to sit up fast. He wasn’t in bed, he wasn’t in his flat and he wasn’t alone. Darian turned to look through the sleepy blur at the female figure standing a few feet from him. It took a few seconds for his fractured memory to convince him this was Maeve Campbell, but that was as much information as it could compute so quickly. There was no memory of how he had ended up there, not at first.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. You came round here to tell me the truth because you were too drunk to lie. I find most people are braver drunk than sober.’