In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

by Malcolm Mackay

  ‘Someone is making a mug out of you, Randle, and they haven’t had to work hard. What was it, huh? They pay off your debts and you spend a few months in here before they make sure you get released? Is that what they told you?’

  ‘Oh, dùin do chlab.’

  ‘You’re in here and they’re out there and you still think they’re going to come back for you. You’ve been left behind, Randle. The only way the case against you falls down is if someone knocks it over and right now I’m the only one trying. You can scream and bawl for their help all you want but they’ve abandoned you. That was always part of the setup you fell for.’

  ‘You’re more full of a shite than a farmer’s field. I’ll be out of here soon enough, it won’t go before a judge.’

  Darian leaned back in his chair and shook his head. Sitting in a prison office, looking at an innocent man making a bad job of trying to look guilty. Whoever he had done the deal with, Cummins trusted them more than he was ever going to trust Darian. They had paid eighteen and a half grand for that privilege, and they were obviously still providing for their patsy. Cummins hadn’t run up that debt on the outside paying for home improvement, and whichever addiction it had fed was probably being maintained in The Ganntair.

  ‘I’m going to keep trying to get you out of here, because no one else will.’

  ‘Ha, you’re priceless. It’s your bloody fault that I’m in here at all.’

  Darian stood and led Cummins to the door. The man in the suit had been waiting with a prison officer out in the corridor, the latter leading Cummins back to a life at least as comfortable as it had been outside. The man in the suit led Darian back down towards the rear entrance the staff used and a long walk out towards a back gate that needed two members of staff to unlock. They’d gone to more trouble to help Darian than he thought his payments to them warranted, which made him wonder how much Sorley was doing to keep them loyal.

  On the walk to the exit and the taxi ride up to Mormaer Station, Darian was trying to glue together the broken pieces of information he’d gathered. Cummins had wanted to be arrested. The drunken talk about Moses Guerra and taking money from him, the debt being paid within hours of the killing, that was choreographed to imitate guilt. And Cummins was so sure of his position. Darian got the train down to Glendan Station and went into the office for a long, slow day of boringly honest work.

  33

  MAEVE WAS WAITING for him at her flat, looking more excited than he did when she opened the door. They went through to the living area in what was becoming routine.

  As he sat Darian said, ‘I’ve had a couple of useful chats, although whatever direction they move us in, it isn’t forward. I do know for sure now that Cummins didn’t pay his own debt, someone paid it for him. That’s more evidence that he probably didn’t do it. I talked to him.’

  ‘In prison?’

  ‘Yeah, but it was off the record. I spoke to him and he didn’t speak back other than to point out that he doesn’t trust me. He was very confident that he’s going to get out, and quite soon. I don’t know if he was in on it from the start, but he’s in on something now. Someone killed Moses and then paid off the debt, maybe then they went to Cummins and told him he had no choice but to play guilty for a while.’

  ‘He’s going to get life for someone else?’

  ‘He doesn’t think it’ll be life, he’s certain it won’t even get to court. A few months and he’ll be back on the street, debt-free and able to return to the crumbling wreck of a life he had before.’

  Maeve frowned and said, ‘If someone else clears his name, isn’t there a chance they implicate themselves in the process?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s occurred to Cummins. Someone used him, got him to take a fall, and by the time he realises they’re not going to bother getting him back out, no one will believe his accusations. He won’t know who was behind it all; Cummins will only have met a third or fourth or fifth party.’

  Maeve nodded and said, ‘Well, while you were digging those bones up, I was doing some handy work of my own. I’ve been writing down way more notes, the stuff that everyone has said to me about this, going right back to when the police were questioning me about it. I think it was MacDuff who mentioned Moses’ paperwork, about how they hadn’t found any. I shrugged it off because of course he wouldn’t keep any when it was all incriminating to him and the people he was working with. But when I spoke to Frang he mentioned documents. It was just a passing comment, laughing about how complicated they were, but Moses always knew how to work it out. When the police went through the flat they didn’t find anything, neither did you and your boss.’

  ‘No, we didn’t, but we checked thoroughly.’

  ‘Maybe you did, but I think I know where his hiding place in the flat was. I thought it was just cash he kept in there. I was going to go check it when I knew the coast was clear.’

  Darian gave her a look.

  ‘Oh, come off it, you think Moses would have preferred I left it for DI Corey to find and slip into his pocket, or for the next people who live in the flat to stumble across it and take a holiday on his efforts?’

  He said, ‘Fine.’

  ‘No, not fine. Don’t give me that look and say that as if you’re judging me. That money would come to no good, but I could use it properly, the way it should be used. I can put it towards finding the person who did this. Isn’t that a better use?’

  Darian raised his hands to calm her. ‘Okay, I get that, the money would be taken away and used for no good, but you should have been honest with me. If I’d known he was hiding things in the flat me and Sholto could have found it earlier.’

  ‘I am being as honest with you as I can be. It’s not that long since DI Corey was accusing me of being some deranged killer. It could have been me instead of Cummins playing the scapegoat, only it would have been because the police round here can’t be bothered looking past the first target they bump into.’

  She was close to tears. Darian got up and went across to the other couch and sat next to her. ‘That’s not going to happen, not now. We’re going to do all we can to find out who did this, and if the money can be used to help then I’m sure that’s what Moses would have wanted.’

  He was speaking of a man he had never met, but Maeve didn’t point that out. She looked him in the eye and put a cold hand on his cheek. ‘I need your help, Darian. I would do it on my own, but with your help I feel like we can do this. We’re a good fit together, you and me. It works.’

  ‘It does.’

  There was a moment when they were half an inch apart. Maeve leaned in and their lips touched, but she moved to the side and turned it into a hug that lasted for thirty seconds. She was right, they were a good fit.

  When she pulled back Darian said, ‘You still have your key?’

  ‘I do.’

  34

  MAEVE DROVE THEM south to Seachran Drive. They parked along from Moses’ flat and sat in the car for a few minutes, watching for any sign of the charming Challaid Police Force. They had to hurry, up the stairs and Maeve fishing the key out of her pocket to get them into the flat. She closed the door quietly behind them.

  Maeve led the way through to the kitchen and opened the door to a shallow cupboard. There were shelves on the back wall and just enough room for a skinny person to step inside. Sholto had opened the door and glanced around when they were in the flat, but hadn’t seen anything that surprised him.

  Maeve said, ‘Hold on.’

  She stepped across the kitchen and pulled open a drawer, fished about among some utensils and came up with a curiously small screwdriver. She walked back over and said, ‘I know it was in here, and I know he used this, but I don’t know exactly where or how.’

  It doesn’t take long to find something odd when you know what odd thing you’re looking for. When they moved a dustpan and brush and a small bag of tools out of the corner they saw the screws on the floorboards. The tops of them were painted with the same varnish as the wood, but y
ou could see the scratches the screwdriver had made and could feel the dents they made in the wood with your fingers.

  Darian unscrewed them and lifted the board, pulling out three envelopes from the small space underneath.

  He said, ‘Here we go.’

  Maeve took them over to the kitchen table and they went through the three of them. All the envelopes were open, some of the papers pushed in sideways or badly folded.

  Maeve said, ‘He wouldn’t have done that, no way. He was tidy with his work.’

  All of the papers were either letters or invoices, and the only name mentioned on any of them was Moses Guerra. The only sums of money mentioned were small and references to money he could easily have acquired legitimately. It implicated no one.

  Maeve said, ‘This can’t be right, it can’t be. There’s no reason why he would have this screwed down under a floorboard, there’s nothing here worth hiding. There must have been something else.’

  She was upset and Darian knew why. She had convinced herself this was going to be a breakthrough and instead they’d found a raised middle finger.

  Darian said, ‘Maybe he kept other things somewhere else.’

  ‘No, I don’t think he had anywhere else. The person who killed him must have known about it, they must have cleared out everything that could implicate them when they killed him.’

  ‘Would he have told them about that place?’

  Maeve shook her head. ‘I don’t know... No, probably not, not unless it was forced out of him somehow, maybe when they were attacking him. Or if it was someone that was really close to him, but I can’t think who that would have been. I don’t know.’

  Darian said nothing. He took the envelopes and slipped the useless letters back into them. He wiped them with his sleeve before he put them back in their needless hiding place and screwed the single board back down and covered it again. Maeve was still sitting at the kitchen table.

  Darian said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  She drove him up towards Bakers Station so he could make his way home from there. It was busy outside the station, hard to find a parking space, and there was a lot of noise and light. Darian sensed the change in her mood. The excitement of catching a killer was waning as they stumbled closer to ugly truths and awareness of their own limitations. The dirtier the case became, the less of a noble cause it seemed, the less of a giddy thrill.

  When she stopped on a single yellow line he turned to her and said, ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I don’t need the heroic private detective to hold me through the night, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  She was looking at him mockingly, a hint of a smile as she got her composure back. Darian said, ‘I just thought you seemed rattled, that was all.’

  ‘I was, but I’ve stopped rattling now. I just assumed it would be someone, I don’t know, distant. Now I think it might have been someone close to him and it upsets me that I don’t know who that could be. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought. And I’m worried it’s going to be someone I know, and that’s a weird feeling, that I might be hunting down a friend. It doesn’t change anything, though, I’m just as determined to catch whoever did it.’

  ‘So am I.’

  Maeve touched his hand and then let go. It felt strange being so close while they talked about her murdered ex-boyfriend. It felt insulting.

  ‘You noticed there was no cash in those envelopes either, so my chances of paying you Sholto’s going rate for this are pretty slim now.’

  Darian smiled. ‘I’ll be generous when I put my bill together.’

  He stepped out of the car and watched her drive away. Darian took the convoluted route home again, getting the train down to Bank Station and leaving by the south exit. It lengthened the walk home as a means of avoiding Gallowglass, who might not even have been there. It gave him time to walk in the cold air, trying to think about the case and the little more he had learned. His mind wasn’t playing ball. All he could think about was Maeve, the touch of her hand, the smell of her. It was unprofessional, but it made him feel happy, and sometimes that matters more.

  THE CHALLAID GAZETTE AND ADVERTISER

  17 Feb 2018

  CONCERNS RAISED AGAIN OVER HOUSING CRISIS

  In an endless echo of worries highlighted repeatedly over the last ten years, a housing charity has brought up the issue of affordable accommodation in Challaid. A recent survey has shown that rates of homelessness are continuing to rise, with the average house price in the city now exceeding £210,000, with the increase being driven by rocketing prices on the west side of the loch where average prices are now approaching £400,000.

  The survey of house prices has again raised the issue of availability on the east side, with particularly acute problems in Earmam and Whisper Hill. Rates of homelessness there continue to be high, with the city council under increasing fire regarding its housing policy. With so few new properties being developed in those areas, landlords have been able to raise prices unchallenged, knowing demand vastly outstrips supply.

  When we reached out to the council for a response to the survey they released a statement saying, ‘Challaid City Council takes seriously its obligation to improve housing availability and conditions for all residents in the city. We have already instigated a policy encouraging owners of brownfield sites to develop them for housing and this will begin to show results in the coming year. We have also made clear our determination to ensure that landlords charge fair rent for their properties, but do not accept that a rent cap will help solve a complex problem. Finally, we will soon put forward new plans to expand developments in Heilam as part of a long-term strategy for increasing housing stock and improving housing conditions in the city.’

  It has already been pointed out that this statement bears a striking resemblance to one released in the wake of a similar survey carried out two years ago. The problem of housing on the east side is one that has rumbled within Challaid for generations, too many people living in cramped conditions with the only people benefiting being the landlords. Solutions have repeatedly been sought but not delivered, and Fair Housing Challaid, the charity who carried out the latest survey, has stated that it expects nothing to change. There is no will among large developers to build on land they own on the east side while there are sites on the south bank and west side that can provide far greater returns, with the marina development on the south bank a notable example.

  There is another, less often mentioned, problem exacerbating the issue. With house prices going ever upward on the west side, the Barton district has become something of a super-rich ghetto, and the mere rich have been pushed further south. This has the knock-on effect of pushing up prices around the south bank, making it impossible for anyone on average incomes to think about moving off the east side. As prices continue to rise the inevitable consequence will be a creeping unaffordability, with Bakers Moor the next area to rise out of reach for most, and the crisis in Earmam and Whisper Hill will become even more acute.

  35

  THEY’D PARKED FURTHER down Parnassus Drive because Sholto didn’t feel the Fiat was worthy of a spot on the Kotkell family driveway. From the street they could see a large garage on the opposite side of the driveway to the house, the sort of building that could hold at least three cars, and it was a fair guess the Fiat didn’t belong among the company it would keep there. Not that it belonged out on the street either, mind you. Parnassus Drive is about the richest of the rich streets up in the north of Barton.

  Sholto tried to comb what was left of his hair in the rear-view mirror with his fingers, wanting to look presentable. He said to Darian, ‘I hope they don’t have a dog. I get nervous around dogs and rich people.’

  They walked up the long drive, admiring the manicured front garden. Sholto took a guess at the gardening bill and puffed out his cheeks. He couldn’t wrap his head around the money on casual display. He said, ‘Imagine having the money to stay here and then choosing to stay here.
Give me enough dosh to buy a house round here and I’d be off somewhere sunny.’

  Darian pressed the doorbell and a dog started barking and a rich person opened the door. Leala Kotkell looked down on the two men her husband had hired and sighed, her small features crumpling into a frown. She said, ‘What do you want?’

  Darian took the lead, saying, ‘We’d like to speak with your son, please, Mrs Kotkell.’

  ‘My husband’s not home.’

  ‘That’s quite all right; it’s just your son we need a chat with. He’s in, I take it.’

  She didn’t like being spoken to that way, and there was a moment when it looked like she was going to turn them away. Instead she opened the door for them. She led them through to what was presumably a study, a desk and two leather couches, no TV, bookcases against three walls and a large bay window looking out across the front garden. Leala Kotkell went to fetch her son, but not without a backward glance to show how reluctant she was to leave these two chancers alone with the valuables.

  When she was gone Sholto, standing at the window, said, ‘A cop’s salary was probably the best I could do with my life, but you’re smart enough to have stuff like this if you’d picked a better career than working with me.’

  ‘Aye, well, I think I’d rather have the one-bedroom flat and a proper job.’

  ‘Mm, maybe you aren’t as smart as I thought.’

  Uisdean Kotkell walked into the room by himself, still sporting a few fetching cuts and bruises that added a dash of purple to his boyish face. Darian and Sholto had both seen much worse injuries plenty of times before on people who insisted they were no big deal.

  Darian said, ‘Uisdean, how are you?’

  ‘I’m okay, fine. I’ll be fine.’

  He sat on the couch opposite them and Darian and Sholto shared a quick look. Darian said, ‘Have you thought of any other details about what happened to you? Is there anything else you can tell us about the attack?’