Lawless

by Alexander McGregor

  With nothing else to go on, Hackett had ordered the soldiers to punch in every scrap of information they had and cross-reference it with the data held by the police forces in Fife and Grampian. They hooked up to HOLMES, the national investigations database for major inquiries that is based at Scotland Yard and which provides interaction between forces. It had been devised by IT anoraks to improve incident-room efficiency. The electronic genius could investigate, collate, analyse and interrogate quicker than some detectives could text for a pizza delivery. On good days, HOLMES solved more crimes than Sherlock ever did. On bad ones, it was an electronic irrelevance.

  This was not one of its most memorable mornings. It was letting Hackett down. Badly.

  He had asked it to search for someone with a pathological hatred of the police. Unsurprisingly, it had produced columns of names but none that connected with the Tribune victims. Then he demanded that it should consider if the fathers of the dead women may have made a common enemy among the criminal fraternity. Or was there someone psychologically flawed who committed crimes while dressed as a police officer? The soldiers flashed their fingers over the keys. They looked at the screens in expectation. The screens looked back, mute, indifferent, unhelpful. If Hackett could have disciplined them for insolence, he would have.

  Detective Inspector Petra Novak entered the incident room and approached the morose superintendent to pass on the details of the telephone conversation she’d had with McBride ten minutes earlier. ‘It’s good news and bad news, sir,’ she said cautiously. ‘Campbell McBride has been notified that the killing spree is just about over. One more victim and that’s it.’

  ‘Asshole,’ Hackett spat at her.

  He caught her astonished look. ‘Sorry. Not you, him – McBride,’ Hackett said by way of explanation. ‘What the hell has it got to do with him?’ He was willing to lash out at anyone better informed than him. That meant no one was safe.

  ‘He’s just trying to be helpful, sir,’ she said defensively, surprised by her rush of loyalty. ‘It’s not his fault. He’s only passing stuff on.’

  ‘Passing stuff on? How come he’s up to his neck in it? Have we checked him out?’ He started towards the computer terminals, thought better of it and returned to face Novak.

  ‘OK, OK, give him our thanks. Tell him we’re extremely grateful,’ Hackett said, trying sincerity but failing.

  When she called McBride, he was having the same debate he had with himself every day at that time – would he lunch on a KitKat or be sensible and have something green? The chocolate always won and every day he convinced himself that the next day would be different.

  Petra saved him from once more breaking his promise to himself. She suggested they meet at Café Buon Giorno in the centre of town to catch up over a coffee. It would also give him an opportunity to hand over the contents of that morning’s mail, she explained. ‘Unless, of course, you would rather have another visit from Detective Sergeant Gavin Rodger?’ she said mischievously.

  ‘Mr Siberia himself? No thanks,’ McBride said. ‘I’ll chill out with you over a bacon roll or something sensible, if you insist.’

  They did not speak for long. Petra looked less strained than when he’d last seen her and was immaculately uncrumpled. But she was still under pressure. The relaxation she usually brought with her was absent. She drank two cups of Americano but couldn’t finish her sandwich. He recognised the symptoms. They were the same kind that overtook him when a deadline loomed and his laptop screen was blank.

  ‘Under the lash, then?’ McBride asked.

  ‘You could say that,’ Petra replied. ‘We’re ticking all the boxes with the inquiry – sometimes twice – but getting nowhere. Hackett, if you’ll pardon the pun, is hacking everybody off with his bad temper. He’s getting pressure from every direction and taking it out on us.’

  McBride gave an understanding nod. ‘He knows he’ll never make chief super if he screws up,’ he said. ‘His problem – and mine as well, come to that – is he knows the whole thing is staring him in the face but he hasn’t a clue what it is.’

  Petra looked disconsolate. Her shoulders drooped and she repeatedly brushed a nervous hand through her hair. She asked McBride for the envelope he’d had delivered that morning. He pulled it from his inside pocket and, from it, withdrew the single sheet of white paper and the page from The Courier. He reread the terse message on the crisp A4 sheet and handed it over.

  Petra quickly scanned it. ‘Short and to the point,’ she said.

  McBride spread open the newspaper page, glanced again at Double Dick and Kate Nightingale’s reports, then passed it across the table.

  Petra held the paper up in front of her face with both hands and peered at him with one eye through the tiny gap where the twelve words had been surgically removed.

  ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with M,’ she said, starting to laugh. It was the first time she’d lightened up since her arrival.

  McBride smiled. The adorable teenager he first knew was never far away. Two women, who looked as though they worked in a bank, glanced up from their panini but carried on eating in silence.

  When Petra left him in the shopping mall outside, he advised her to get an early night. ‘It will all seem much better in the morning,’ he said attentively.

  She smiled agreement. ‘You’re right. A quick visit to the gym on the way home, half an hour in the sauna, then tucked up by ten o’clock.’ She put an arm round him, held him for longer than she needed, then placed a kiss that lingered on to his cheek. ‘Be good,’ she warned.

  McBride nodded with mock solemnity. ‘As always,’ he replied, turning away and feeling conscious of his pleasure at taking her smell with him.

  He had everything but nothing to do. McBride knew that, if he returned to his apartment, he would once more be alone with his thoughts. It was a situation he normally enjoyed. Today it was not the preferred option. He knew with absolute certainty that he would be consumed by the same kind of frustration experienced by Hackett at being unable to assemble the pieces of jigsaw that were careering hopelessly inside his head.

  Even before Petra had disappeared into the crowd of shoppers bustling towards the Overgate shopping centre, he was becoming troubled by something he could not begin to identify.

  He needed company and sought it in Waterstone’s bookstore, the place where the appalling journey of slaughter had really begun for him.

  Gordon Dow, the astute, likeable manager with the wardrobe of neatly ironed shirts, was elated to see him. The Law Town Killers was still the number one best-seller and canny Dundonians continued to seek signed copies in the hope of one day possessing a treasure. The idea amused McBride, especially as he was a collector of ‘worthless’ signed books himself. He hadn’t even read a couple of them but still hung on to them for their investment potential.

  So he sat for half an hour putting his signature to a stack of copies of the tales of murder he’d written about, wondering if one day someone might pen a book about the dead women now filling his thoughts. Which category would they be in? he pondered. Solved or unsolved?

  When he’d finished, he spent some time with Gordon Dow in the downstairs coffee shop. The manager asked McBride if he’d seen the item in the previous day’s Courier which had featured a photograph of Dow and his staff receiving an award for operating Dundee’s best branch of any national chain of shops.

  McBride shook his head absently. ‘Sorry, missed it – been busy,’ he said apologetically.

  Dow left the table and returned a few moments later with a copy of the newspaper. He spread it open and began to turn the pages, pausing briefly at page three, which carried Double Dick and Kate’s murder reports. ‘Hellish business,’ he said, jabbing a finger on their stories. ‘Hope they nail the bastard, double quick.’ He didn’t wait for a comment but turned the page. He beamed proudly. In the middle of page four and spread over six columns was a large photograph of himself and his staff receiving their award from Dun
dee’s Lord Provost.

  McBride stared at it, saying nothing. He was transfixed. Not at the splendid picture and report of his companion’s success but at the full significance of the item. He hastily congratulated the bookstore manager, ignored the half-finished cup of coffee in front of him and rose quickly to his feet, saying unconvincingly that he had suddenly remembered a pressing appointment.

  In his haste to get out of the shop, McBride took the steps of the escalator two at a time. He hurried to the car park where he’d left the Mondeo. Then he drove home, his mind racing as fast as he was driving.

  50

  McBride desperately wondered if he had been unbelievably prophetic or was merely clutching at the first reasonable straw. He had predicted to Petra the answer to the riddle that was perplexing a large proportion of the country’s police force was probably ‘staring him in the face’. Less than a minute later, he had stared without seeing at a newspaper she had held light-heartedly in front of him. A newspaper that had looked ordinary but unusual at the same time. A newspaper that might have represented the first mistake a serial killer had made. Not for what it contained – for what it didn’t.

  When he had gazed back at Petra as she jokingly peered at him through the aperture left by the words that had been cut away, he had been aware that something had disturbed him about the page facing him. But what? It was unremarkable. It carried news of road accidents, a fire, the most recent decisions of the town council. Nothing unusual. Except …

  Long before he arrived back at the flat on the Esplanade, McBride was toying with a theory so far-fetched he could not contemplate sharing it with anyone. But he knew he would not rest until he played it out.

  Once inside the apartment, he took time only to remove his jacket before opening his laptop and accessing Google. He tapped a person’s name into the search engine.

  No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

  He tried again, this time just the surname but with an occupation.

  No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

  He opened up a new window, the site of an organisation abroad, and repeated the process. Nil result. He keyed in a different set of queries. Interrogated every link. Nil. Nil. Nil. McBride sat hunched over the keyboard for more than two hours. If perseverance was all that was required, he would not have been defeated. But it wasn’t and he was.

  Finally, with a string of oaths, he logged off. He repeated the words over and over with increasing frustration before slamming the lid of the laptop shut.

  He stared at the inoffensive little box for ten minutes, willing it to answer back. Then a thought entered his head – one so obvious he could not understand why it had not occurred before. Calmness returned. McBride opened the laptop up again and quietly communicated once more with Google. This time the enquiry was simple. He requested the telephone number of a large newspaper in a major European city and received an immediate response. He closed down the computer, picked up his mobile and keyed in the number he’d been given. He asked for the news editor and, after identifying himself, was put straight through. The voice at the other end spoke perfect English.

  They talked for several minutes and, at first, the conversation was almost exclusively one-sided. McBride asked a series of questions and received a series of answers, all of them negative. Then the news editor put another journalist on the line, someone older, a man with a longer memory. The responses became less dismissive, more encouraging. ‘What you are telling me is starting to sound familiar,’ he told McBride. ‘The details are sounding a bell, as you would say. But not the name. Give me time to do some research for you and I will call back.’

  McBride paid him copious thanks, passed over his number and rang off with more expressions of gratitude. He sank deeper into his chair at the window, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He realised it was the first time his mind had felt relaxed in weeks.

  51

  It was another three hours before the phone rang in McBride’s flat. He had positioned it by his side and lifted it instantly. The same voice he had listened to with mounting excitement earlier spoke to him easily and with a hint of satisfaction. The caller had a story to tell, he informed McBride, and, although some of the details were still elusive, there might be enough information to be of assistance.

  The journalist hundreds of miles away said the name of the person involved was not who McBride thought it would be but was almost certainly Charles Mikel, a middle-ranking police officer who, twenty years ago, had been one of his country’s most promising officers. In furtherance of his career, which his superiors had hoped would develop and become international, Mikel had been sent to Scotland to attend a four-month course at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan. His fellow students were other officers who had all been hand-picked by police forces in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. Like Mikel, each of them had been identified as having the potential to reach the highest echelons of their profession.

  The course had gone well for Mikel until two weeks before it was due to end. Then it had been suspected he’d become involved with a young male constable attending the college as part of the new recruits intake. The visiting officer had succumbed to the persistent advances of the attractive probationary policeman. Others on the course had been questioned about the suspected liaison and afterwards Mikel was ordered to return home, his studies incomplete. McBride had listened in silence, only nodding quickly from time to time and urging his caller to continue with his historic account.

  When it seemed he had finished, McBride started to speak. But the voice on the other end of the line interrupted him. ‘There is a little more, Mr McBride,’ he said. ‘Two weeks after Mikel returned home in disgrace a reporter from this newspaper learned of the story and published an account of what had taken place. Although it was not a sensational-style article, Mikel was devastated by the effect he knew it would have on his family. He committed suicide two days after the story appeared. His wife never recovered from his death and exactly a year later she also took her own life. It was a very sad thing for them.’

  McBride asked several questions and the answers he received confirmed much of what he had bizarrely begun to suspect when Gordon Dow had proudly pointed out the photograph of himself and his award-winning staff earlier that afternoon. There was just a single question to be answered and the man speaking to him from one of Europe’s best-known cities would not be able to enlighten him. McBride thanked his helpful fellow journalist, indicated that he might be in a position to repay his co-operation in the near future and rang off.

  Without putting the phone down, he called Petra’s number. She did not reply. The call clicked on to her voicemail and he remembered her promise of an early night. He did not leave a message. Instead, he rang police headquarters and asked if Superintendent Hackett was still on duty. To his surprise, he learned he was. To his greater surprise, he was put straight through.

  Hackett was not especially delighted to hear from him. He struggled to sound friendly. ‘How can we assist you, Mr McBride?’ It would have been a reasonable question if it hadn’t been laden with sarcasm.

  McBride ignored the hostility. ‘Might be the other way round, actually,’ he said. ‘If you can tell me what I need to know, I may be of considerable assistance to you.’ He could sense the superintendent’s battle to hold himself in check. The line was heavy with silence.

  McBride pressed on. ‘I need to know the names of all the officers who were on a particular course at Tulliallan twenty years ago.’ He said it matter-of-factly – not making it sound like a ridiculous thing to ask just a couple of hours before midnight.

  Hackett showed unexpected restraint. ‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ he almost hissed, pausing between each word for effect. ‘How in God’s name am I supposed to know that? You do own a watch, don’t you? The college shut up shop about five hours ago. Get real, McBride.’ Then, years of police training at last kicking in, h
e asked quietly, ‘Why do you want to know?’

  It was a fair question in the circumstances and McBride was about to tell him. Then, just as though he’d suddenly been caught in the headlamps of a truck hurtling towards him, he knew he had not needed to speak to Hackett. Hadn’t required any assistance from him. Realising that he was already in possession of the information he thought he had wanted, a sudden chill ran the length of his spine.

  McBride was also positive beyond doubt that he had to act on it without delay. ‘Tell you tomorrow, Superintendent,’ he said curtly. Without waiting for the acerbic Hackett to respond, he hung up.

  Then, for the second time that day, McBride took a flight of stairs two at a time before throwing himself into his car and moving away at speed.

  52

  He headed east, out along the road that joined Broughty Ferry with Monifieth and past the low bungalows with their cropped, watered lawns and double-glazed windows where sometimes the curtains twitched. At that time of night, the bumper-to-bumper convoys that carried rush-hour commuters home to their smart houses had long disappeared.

  McBride practically had the road to himself. He charged the Mondeo through the gears and put his foot to the floor for the long straight stretch that carried him into Monifieth. He took the last awkward bend into the centre of the small township almost on two wheels and sped through the deserted shopping precinct before braking abruptly to turn right into Tay Street. He drove for another hundred yards then swung left into the car park of the recently completed Grange apartment block that sat back from the golf course, looking out towards the North Sea.