Lawless

by Alexander McGregor

  ‘You’ve heard?’

  ‘Yes, just seen the billboards. Is it what I think?’

  ‘Absolutely. No doubt whatsoever,’ Petra said flatly. ‘Our man’s been busy.’

  ‘How?’ he enquired.

  ‘Long story. Not pretty.’

  ‘Who is – was – she?’

  ‘Name’s Ireland – Lynne Ireland. Lives – lived – in Broughty Ferry. Just round the corner from you, actually. Brook Street – the houses at the far end, just before you get to Esplanade.’

  Before McBride could make a response, she spoke again. ‘And, before you ask, yes, her father was a policeman – a chief super from Glasgow where the family used to live.’

  McBride drew in his breath then gave a low whistle. He said nothing, taking in the thought that his tormentor had been within touching distance less than twenty-four hours earlier – might have driven past his apartment on the riverfront. He had a dozen questions but didn’t ask one of them.

  Petra spoke again. ‘We’re going to have to cut this short, for both our sakes,’ she explained, talking quickly. ‘I’m going into a briefing in three minutes and I presume you’ll want to attend the press conference. It’s scheduled for an hour from now.’

  McBride looked at his watch. There was just enough time to shower and eat a sandwich on the move. He rang off.

  * * *

  Police officers who are in charge of press conferences view them with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension, mostly the latter. They stage them for two purposes. To boast following a successful conviction or to recruit the aid of the public whose assistance might allow them to brag in the future. No officer is truly comfortable sitting in front of rows of reporters. It is part of a police officer’s natural inclination not to trust people but they trust members of the fourth estate least of all. However, for most of the time, especially on the major unsolved cases, they can’t function fully without them. It presents them with an unhappy dilemma. They want to appear as if they are giving total co-operation to the journos they may despise but, if they could withhold every scrap of information in their possession, they would be happy. It is an uneasy relationship between two factions which feed off each other – both are vultures.

  That afternoon, in the airless room in the headquarters of Tayside Police, he was, for once, in the unique position of not caring that he was about to be short-changed. He would play catch-up later with the attractive female detective inspector sitting next to Detective Superintendent John Hackett, who was doing his best to convince the hack-pack that he really was their best friend. The senior officer even managed to string out a meagre handful of facts into a statement that took all of eight seconds to read.

  Lynne Ireland, a thirty-two-year-old administrator, had been discovered in the apartment block where she lived alone at around nine o’clock that morning by a colleague who had called to give her a lift to Dundee College where they both worked. She had suffered head injuries. Nothing appeared to have been removed from the flat. There was no evidence of a break-in.

  The rest was the commercial – ‘Anyone who was aware of Miss Ireland’s movements after 9 p.m. the previous evening, when she was last seen alive, or who might have seen a suspicious person or persons entering or leaving the block of flats etc., etc.’

  The Courier had two reporters in attendance – Kate Nightingale, looking fragrant in an unexpected white jacket covered in a pattern of red poppies which you either loved or loathed, and Richard Richardson, looking crumpled in a pinstriped suit covered with the customary ash.

  Double Dick was the first to raise his hand with a question. ‘Was a weapon used or was she punched to death?’ he demanded.

  ‘No comment,’ the detective superintendent replied, feigning regret at his unhelpfulness.

  ‘Had she been raped?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Double Dick tried once more. ‘Are you linking it to any other murder?’

  ‘No comment.’ The detective superintendent looked uncomfortable.

  The chief reporter of The Courier sighed. ‘Do you think she knew her killer? I know – no comment.’ Double Dick gave up. ‘Waste of bloody time,’ he muttered. ‘I’m off.’ He stood up and, on the way out, spoke to Kate Nightingale. ‘See if you can charm something out of them. But don’t hold your breath.’ He looked over at McBride, nodded towards the door and raised an eyebrow.

  McBride accepted the invitation and followed him into the corridor.

  ‘We should boycott their bloody press conferences,’ Richardson said. ‘See how they manage without us.’ He studied McBride for several moments before continuing. ‘Didn’t hear your dulcet tones in there. Not like you to be so reticent,’ he said, making it sound like a question.

  McBride lifted his shoulders. ‘Not much point. I’ve seen you more dynamic yourself, come to that.’

  This time Richardson shrugged. ‘As you say, your head gets sore hitting brick walls.’

  McBride recognised the sounds of the press conference winding up. He knew Petra would emerge into the corridor at any moment and wondered how he would get rid of Double Dick. A subterfuge was not necessary. His old colleague seemed happy to cut their conversation short.

  ‘Must dash, Campbell,’ Richardson said. ‘Things to do, people to see.’

  Trying to wind me up, McBride told himself. Bastard wants me to think he’s ahead of the game. Or maybe not …

  When Petra walked from the conference room, her superior officer was by her side, looking thankful his ordeal was over. She dropped half a pace behind the superintendent so he would not see her face. She glanced over at McBride and slowly shook her head from side to side, telling him it was not the time for a discussion. His return nod was just as imperceptible.

  They met forty-five minutes later in the Bell Tree. She was waiting for him, seated at a table with a half-empty cup of coffee in front of her. She had arrived early because there was much she had to impart.

  Lynne Ireland had indeed suffered head injuries but none that anyone at police headquarters had ever encountered before. The bone of her delicate nose had been smashed in two and the top half had travelled like a missile upwards at speed into her brain. She had died almost instantly. The murder weapon was a police hat. It had been placed peak first at the base of her nose, held firmly and then pushed with rapid force into her face. The cap had travelled no more than two inches but had been as lethal as a bullet. It could not have been anything other than a deliberate act of slaughter by someone who had set out to kill. Someone indifferent to the indescribable pain the victim would have momentarily experienced.

  McBride already knew the answer to his first two questions but asked them anyway. Lynne Ireland was, of course, the daughter of a former police officer, an ex-chief superintendent who was retired and living in the west of Scotland. She had apparently also shared a bottle of wine with her killer.

  Petra anticipated his next questions and gave him answers before he posed them. ‘Yes, there had been sexual intercourse,’ she said with something approaching resignation. ‘We swabbed her for semen, found some and it’s being checked out even as we speak. The hat carried no identification but should have been laden with enough sweat to give us all the DNA we wanted – except it had been scrubbed as clean as the proverbial whistle. From end to end. You want disinfectant traces? We could have filled a bottle!’ Petra exclaimed.

  McBride swore wearily. ‘Thinks he’s a clever bastard,’ he said. ‘And he’s probably right.’

  Petra paused for effect. ‘Not quite,’ she said softly. ‘He missed a single hair clinging to the inside of the sweatband. Be interesting to see if it matches the semen.’

  45

  Police were all over Broughty Ferry like an east-coast haar. They were in the shops and on the street corners. They knocked on doors and ticked boxes on the questionnaires attached to their clipboards. They filled the betting shops and the coffee houses and, when they were done, they packed the bars. All the time they aske
d for help and all the time they failed to receive it. Not because the good citizens of the cultured seaside suburb were being difficult. How could you help when you had nothing to tell?

  Lynne Ireland might have lived on another planet, as far as most of them were concerned. She left for work in the morning before the place was fully awake and by the time she returned in the evening the shutters were coming down. The ones who knew her best, her neighbours, didn’t really know her at all.

  She was ‘a lovely young woman’ who was ‘decent and respectable’ and she never made ‘trouble’ because she was ‘quiet and private’. The subtext was they were hardly aware of her existence because that was how she liked it.

  The door-to-door inquiries were productive only because they were non-productive. Whoever had visited the college administrator to take her life had been as ‘quiet and private’ as the occupant of the unremarkable flat herself. Death had arrived and departed unseen and apparently with an absence of sound. It was a brick wall.

  None of it came as any surprise to Campbell McBride. Lynne Ireland symbolised a significant strata of her gender and generation. Financially independent. Emotionally uncommitted. Psychologically balanced. Socially anonymous. Everything about her said she would never finish up a murder victim – except her father’s occupation.

  Why should that be so important? It was a question McBride had asked himself a hundred times.

  The same query had also been put to her father, ex-Chief Superintendent Thomas Ireland, who had finished a distinguished career as a divisional commander with Strathclyde Police, the largest force in the country. He had a high clear-up rate for most of his career but did not have the remotest notion why his job might have cost his daughter her life. Furthermore, he had rarely visited Dundee until his daughter had moved to a job in the city eighteen months earlier. None of it was particularly helpful.

  McBride drew the Mondeo into the kerb in Gray Street after checking he was not parking on a yellow. It was an unaccustomed practice but, with the place swarming with uniforms, it seemed a sensible precaution. He realised he had pulled up outside two of his three most favourite places in the Ferry. After The Fort, he preferred to spend any spare time he had left browsing in Eduardo Alessandro’s art studio, or sampling the extraordinary range of ice cream in Visocchi’s parlour next door. He was in the process of contemplating a lightning visit to the latter when his mobile sounded.

  Petra wasted no time with pleasantries. She told him the DNA test results were back and said he might be interested in what they showed.

  He said nothing, waiting for her to expand.

  Speaking with quiet deliberation that demanded no interruption, she explained that the profiles from the semen removed from Lynne Ireland and from the hair on the inside of the sweatband of the police hat had been compared. They did not come close to a match.

  He remained silent, prompting her to repeat her announcement, which she did, this time with heavy emphasis on the ‘not’.

  McBride swore in disappointment

  Petra spoke again. ‘That was the good news,’ she said, unable to keep a smirk from her voice. ‘The hair belonged to a friend of yours.’

  ‘Who?’ he demanded.

  ‘Bryan Gilzean.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bryan Gilzean, you know, the man doing life up at Perth,’ she said, louder than she’d ever spoken to him before.

  McBride swore again, this time with unexpected vigour.

  He paused to consider the implications of the time bomb she’d tossed at him. No rational explanation surfaced. ‘What in God’s name does that mean?’ he declared at last.

  ‘It means the hair on the sweatband came from the head of Bryan Gilzean,’ Petra said. ‘No one else’s head. That’s it really. The rest we have to find out.’

  ‘How?’ McBride pressed.

  ‘You’re the investigative reporter.’

  ‘And you’re the detective inspector,’ McBride said, exasperation overtaking him.

  ‘Yes and we’re both screwed,’ she said, ringing off.

  He sat behind the wheel staring at a signed Vettriano print in Alessandro’s window but not seeing it. An avalanche of thoughts roared through the mind which, minutes earlier, had been wiped blank. None of them made any sense. Except one. The only certainty was that whoever killed Lynne Ireland, it was not Bryan Gilzean. Is that the message? he asked himself. Is someone trying to prove he’s an innocent man? Or is that just what we’re supposed to think? Are we being informed or tormented? Or both?

  McBride was still wrestling with his thoughts when his mobile ran again. The caller did not identify herself. She did not have to. McBride instantly recognised the even voice that gave no hint of its geographical origins. Anneke Meyer was relaxed, playful – and inviting. She would be working out at Next Generation in a couple of hours. Was he free? Would he like to meet?

  McBride told her he was tied up.

  ‘That sounds interesting,’ she teased. ‘Feet or hands?’

  He explained about Lynne Ireland – the story he needed to write about her murder for the next day’s national paper he was freelancing for.

  She reminded him of where she worked, told him she was aware of the tragedy, felt sick at the details.

  McBride brightened. ‘You’ll have inside information, then,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should take down your particulars, after all?’

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ she said, sounding serious for the first time. ‘But I imagine you know more than me. Petra will be keeping you informed.’ She managed to make the comment sound like a question.

  He did not oblige. ‘Her lips are tighter than yours,’ he said lightly.

  ‘No comment – but maybe she needs more practice,’ Anneke said, starting to laugh.

  She allowed McBride to finish the call only after extracting a promise from him that he would be in touch within the next few days.

  The mobile sounded once more. Petra said she was phoning because she knew he would suddenly remember to remind her of something she had remembered anyway.

  ‘I’m confused,’ McBride said. ‘Remind me.’

  ‘OK. We’ve staked out the Central Library. Same team. More cameras.’

  He started to laugh. ‘Not a chance in hell,’ he said. ‘There’s more likelihood of Dundee United winning the European Cup than there is of our man showing up there. But do it anyway.’

  46

  Nobody buys newspapers for the good news. They don’t know it and wouldn’t admit it even if they did but people read papers to learn of the misfortune of others. If something ghastly has happened to someone else, it makes their own injustices seem more bearable. Life isn’t so bad if it’s worse for your neighbour. Death sells best of all. Not a hundred people perishing in an earthquake on the other side of the world but the last breath of a person you can identify with. It’s even better when it has taken place in your home town and if the extinction of life has not been through natural causes.

  On the day following the discovery of Lynne Ireland’s corpse, The Courier was in danger of selling out. The morning daily carried words and pictures on the front and on two pages inside. Richard Richardson and Kate Nightingale might not have filled much of their notebooks at the obligatory but largely pointless police press conference but they had more than compensated in the background stories they had rapidly put together.

  Double Dick was at his most eloquent and informed and he had painted a picture of Lynne Ireland with such deft strokes he could have known her all his life instead of them being complete strangers. Nightingale, hard-nosed but caring, was as elegant with her words as she was with some of her sexual practices. She had knocked out 750 words on the paradox of being able to live within the heart of a tight community yet still be a stranger in its midst. It was an impressive performance by both reporters.

  McBride reread the articles for the second time then folded the paper and put it in his jacket pocket. He knew he would refer to it if the London news desk h
e was dealing with wanted a significant follow-up piece, which was probable if the story kept its legs. He did not doubt that it would.

  Broughty Ferry still swarmed with police, uniformed and plain clothes, but the place was also starting to fill up with the rubbernecks who had made the short journey down from Dundee for no other reason than to gaze at the otherwise anonymous house where a young woman had died.

  The Big Issue sellers, sensing a booming trade, had followed them out of the city centre and into the douce suburb. One of them, a female with a pinched face that stared dully out at McBride from underneath a low baseball cap, had taken up a pitch outside Woolworth’s. She was probably about twenty but looked half as much again. She had been good-looking once but the decaying front teeth and acne spoiled any chance she had of making it on to the front cover of Hello! magazine. McBride looked at her with sadness as he passed by. Females like her stood on corners all over the country. Most of them were doing it to feed a habit. At least they were selling magazines and not their bodies. He fished into his back pocket and pressed a five-pound note into her hand, waving away the copy of her wares she offered him.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. The voice was unexpectedly cultured, like the well-cared-for hands. The politeness genuine. McBride had forgotten that addictions didn’t only afflict those unlucky enough to be born into deprivation.

  Luck, he thought. Most folk would have said Lynne Ireland was lucky – until yesterday.

  He resisted the temptation to engage the magazine seller in conversation, to tell her life could be even worse if she fell in with the wrong people. She already had and they were waiting to take his fiver off her in exchange for some chemicals.

  He walked on, feeling foolish. Not just because he had helped put money in some dealer’s pocket but because he was killing time while he waited for the person who caused the temporary increase in Broughty Ferry’s population to make his next move. He was convinced that would happen sooner rather than later. He sensed an acceleration in the events that were unfolding around him and cursed his impotence to do anything about it.