Cry Uncle

by Russel D. McLean

  Or maybe I just told myself that.

  Griggs had the look of a man trying not to tell the truth. Word around Tayside Constabulary had always been that he was the kind of man you didn’t want on the other side of the table during a round of poker. Could have fooled me. He wore his anxiety like a suit. Better pressed than the one he actually had on.

  ‘This time next year,’ he said, ‘there will be no SCDEA. You’ve heard, haven’t you?’ Of course I’d heard. Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, was disbanding old policing structures, introducing a new, unified Scottish police force. The old divisions would be gone. No more Fife. No more Tayside. No more Lothian. The force would be as one. Police Scotland. The shiny new face of twenty-first-century Scottish law enforcement. As well as the old divisions collapsing into obsolescence, so were newer and more modern institutions like the SCDEA. The Agency would be enveloped into Police Scotland, but no one seemed sure of the details.

  ‘You’re running out of time.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll still be operational in a year’s time. Same game, different initials. You know what bureaucracies can be like. But I’d rather not take any chances. Besides, this operation against the old man has been running for close to ten years, now. I’m not the first man to head it. The SCDEA didn’t start it. There were others before this even began. But we’re running on empty, now. Despite everything we know about David Burns, we’ve never been able to bring him in. Never had enough to satisfy the Procurator Fiscal’s office.’

  ‘Which is why you need me. Why you needed Ernie Bright’

  He nodded.

  I understood why Griggs had been so heavy-handed in his pursuit. David Burns was fascinated by me, in his own way. Time and again the aging hard man had made overtures about how I should join his outfit. Painting himself not as a crook, but as a man of the people. The police, in his mind, were little more than automatons following a party line. Men like Burns, on the other hand, understood the complex needs of the population and were therefore entitled to do whatever was right for the people.

  Regular fucking Robin Hood. Or at least that’s how he always wanted me to see him.

  Burns’s view of me as a sympathetic soul meant that, if I pressed the matter, I was perfectly placed to get close to the old man, to uncover his secrets.

  Which was why Griggs figured I’d make the perfect honey trap. Thankfully, without the sex.

  By the time of this particular meeting, I had already made an overture to Burns. Not in the way that Griggs had expected, and not in a way I’d ever go into detail about. That was fine by Griggs, just as long as I delivered what he needed. We both understood that sometimes undercover work could involve undertaking actions that were morally uncertain.

  What I’d done for the old man was deliver him a killer. A man who had murdered children, including the son of Burns’s neighbour. Burns killed the twisted fuck, weighted the corpse and tossed it deep into the Tay, where he could rot at the bottom of the river for all anyone cared.

  I had watched the execution. It had been an initiation, I suppose.

  The first step in our new acquaintance.

  A first step from which there was no turning back.

  ‘Are you willing to do what the old man tells you? He will test you.’

  He had already tested me. When the old man killed a child murderer in front of me, it was as much a test of my reaction as it was the legitimate passing of a sentence against a man who had transgressed Burns’s personal moral code.

  But David Burns was not the type to trust easily. I would be expected to do more than just passively observe acts of violence. I would be expected to get my hands dirty. Whether Burns accepted my personal moral code or not, he would expect me to follow his orders. Obey his rules.

  As part of our arrangement, Griggs assured me that as long as I stayed within certain parameters of behaviour, he would be able to give me a clean slate when the old man was brought in.

  I wanted to ask: is this what he offered Ernie Bright?

  Did anyone ensure that he had understood the risks? That he knew there was a possibility he could wind up dead in an abandoned warehouse, his chest torn apart by a shotgun blast, his life and career in ruins?

  But I didn’t say anything like that. Because by then, there was nothing left to say. The chance to back out was long gone.

  I was in deep.

  All I could do was try and keep my head above water.

  THREE

  Eight months later. The same room as the unconscious fat man.

  Findo nodded to a cracked door on our left. Ajar. The wood warped just enough to prevent it closing all the way.

  I shrugged but didn’t say anything. Findo’s hearing was clearly better than mine. He was still young. I was a curmudgeonly thirty-eight, although parts of my body felt closer to sixty after all the beatings I’d taken down the years.

  Findo hefted his lead piping, and kicked in the door. In his head, he was probably Arnie or any number of eighties action movie heroes. I’d been in Findo’s flat, seen the posters he had framed: Cobra, Commando, Red Dawn, Lethal Weapon.

  ‘Awright, you pricks! Listen up! This is … holy shit! McNee! Get your fucking arse in here!’ Concern in his voice. Not something I’d heard before. Usually, Findo was swagger and bravado. No compassion. No empathy for other human beings. But there was a catch in his voice that didn’t sound right. Like he didn’t know the proper way to react.

  I walked into the room just behind him. Small. Same bare floors we’d seen everywhere else. What light there was cracking through grime encrusted windows. Flat pack bunk beds, shoddily assembled, adorned with ratty quilts. Clothes on the floor. Takeout cartons here and there, some still half full. The smell of rotting food mixed with distinctly human odours.

  Bodies moved. Hesitant. Uncertain.

  Three girls, maybe in their early twenties. Dark hair, big eyes, skinny frames. The kind of skinny you could count their ribs. They were in various states of undress, covering themselves up, hiding behind the frames of the bunk beds for whatever protection they could find.

  Slowly, Findo lowered the piping he was still holding high over his head. Look closely at his eyes, you could see the cogs turning behind them. Listen hard enough, you could hear them, too. He was a certain kind of smart, but when it came to things outside his experience, he could be slow on the uptake.

  ‘What the fuck is this? McNee?’

  I ignored his question, walked forward, holding my hands out to show I didn’t mean any harm. One of the girls, the one closest to me, watched me with eyes that were too scared to blink. She was tense, and when I came close, she moved her head back. Her thin body twisted like a cat recoiling from a threat. But she didn’t move from where she was. The hesitancy was countered by the fact that I wasn’t presenting a threat. I wasn’t yelling, screaming, raising my fists. I crouched down, took her hands in mine. Keeping the grip soft. She could move away if she wanted to.

  But she didn’t.

  Her eyes locked with mine. I wanted to weep when I looked into them.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘We won’t hurt you.’

  She shuddered. Bowed her head. Let go of my hands and collapsed on to the floor.

  I looked up.

  The other girls continued to stare at me. Saying nothing. Their faces blank. No emotion showing.

  Were they afraid?

  Or simply unable to process what was happening?

  FOUR

  ‘Call the police. Call the fucking police. Let them handle it.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘That’s what the old man says. Just make sure you get the fuck out of there, OK?’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Right.’ Not really listening.

  I was on the phone, still crouched next to the girl I’d first approached. She was still hunched in on herself. Afraid that I would suddenly turn on her. She didn’t know what I was saying into the phone. She had barely understood what I had said to her. Her English
was confined to rote pleasantries, words she’d been taught to say. No doubt to please men who maybe looked like me and Findo.

  The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Michael Malone. Burns’s mouthpiece. The cops called him The Lieutenant. Because that’s what he was. The one who did the grunt work, made sure everything ran smooth. If the police wanted, they could have put Malone away decades earlier. But since everyone knew that he was simply the public face and not the man giving orders, the idea was deemed pointless. The exercise had always been about putting away David Burns, not the men below him. Cut off the head, you kill the snake. Old-fashioned thinking, but effective. And even if someone had the bright idea of trying to break Michael, it wouldn’t work. He was too loyal. Like anyone who got that close to Burns, he worshipped the old man with the fervour of the religious fanatic.

  ‘Make the call,’ Malone said. ‘Then scarper. Leave the girls. Just fucking go. Old man’s say so, yeah?’

  Fine. I hung up. Looked at the girls. They were shivering under blankets. I’d managed to persuade them to come out from where they were hiding, got Findo to make sure they were covered and in as good health as could be expected. They were underfed and clearly abused, but for the most part seemed in no immediate danger.

  Having done his good deed, Findo stood by the window, looking outside. As though he couldn’t cope with what we’d found, just wanted it all to go away. He’d got over the shock, started thinking about the implications of our discovery. Couldn’t handle them. This was not the kind of situation he was comfortable with.

  He liked the simplicity of violence. Knowing that his choices were as simple as to kick arse or have your arse kicked. This kind of situation just didn’t belong in his world.

  But he understood what was happening. He knew things about how the world worked, just preferred to ignore them. But now he couldn’t, not when it was happening right in front of his eyes.

  There were more girls than we had first seen. Six in total. All underfed, half-dressed, terrified of the men who had burst into the tiny room they’d been calling home. They’d probably been here for months. Compared to the way they’d been brought into the country, I suppose it seemed like five-star luxury.

  There were marks on the girls, too.

  Didn’t need to be a forensic investigator to figure what had happened to them.

  I dialled the emergency line from my mobile, asked for the police.

  ‘Can I have your name, sir?’

  ‘John MacClane.’ Figured she might not get that I was lying. Whatever. I couldn’t leave my real details, much as I wanted to. The girls were a complication we didn’t need. And you can’t break cover because of the overwhelming urge to act like a white knight.

  I hung up. ‘We need to leave.’

  ‘What about them?’ Findo finally speaking.

  ‘The police aren’t dumb. I know. I was one of them, remember? They’ll work out there’s a human rights violation operating out of this address. Might take them a few minutes, like.’

  ‘A what? Oh. Aye.’

  ‘We’ll have legged it by the time they get here, Fin. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Old man’s orders.’

  ‘Direct?’

  ‘Through Malone, but he talked to the old man.’

  ‘OK,’ Findo said. He turned to face the girls. ‘We’re leaving now. Me and my friend. But it’s OK. Everything’s going to be OK. You understand?’ He spoke slowly, thinking that might help them understand what he was saying.

  But of course, they didn’t understand. Just looked at him with a mix of fear and incomprehension. Wasn’t just about understanding English. With someone like Fin, you needed a PhD in the Dundonian accent.

  ‘Do you understand? Comprende?’ Each word shouted in an attempt at comprehensibility.

  ‘Fin, that’s French.’ Or at least an attempt. But I kept that last thought to myself.

  ‘European, though? They’re European, right? They have to speak French. It’s like the fucking law over there.’

  I shook my head. Said, ‘Come on. We need to get out of here.’

  As we left, Findo turned and said, ‘You never saw us. Merci Beaucoup.’ Even if they could speak French, chances were, given Findo’s accent, they’d still have been left without a clue.

  FIVE

  When I walked into the Gateside Pub that evening, Susan was already seated near the rear wall, nursing what looked like a simple Coke. The main bar was small, the tables intimate. Quiet, but then it was a Tuesday evening, and traffic out this way had been light. It was the kind of pub where you were either a local, or you’d had to make a special journey.

  The girl behind the bar said, ‘Looking for food?’

  ‘Meeting someone,’ I said, and nodded to Susan. ‘But, sure, we’ll be eating.’

  ‘She didn’t seem so sure.’

  I took the menus and went over to Susan. The girl poured a pint while I sat down. Susan said, ‘The food’s good. I just didn’t know …’

  ‘No, we don’t really see enough of each other these days, aye? Good to have an excuse.’

  She smiled at that. But it was a sad kind of smile, and made me sorry that I’d said anything.

  She said, ‘I used to come out here with Mum and Dad. My aunt lived in the village.’

  ‘Nice wee place.’

  The girl from behind the bar brought my drink, said, as she placed it on the table, ‘Friendliest village in Scotland.’

  ‘That a fact?’

  ‘We got an award and everything.’

  Gateside’s a small village maybe thirty or forty minutes’ drive after crossing the bridge to Fife. There’s not much there, except the pub and a garage that specializes in Minis. It’s nestled beneath the Lomond hills, feels out of the way, the kind of village – maybe its closer to a hamlet – where you can imagine everyone knows your name. A real community. The point of meeting here was that it was isolated from the city; no one knew me or Susan or our connection. Unless maybe they recognized Susan from when she visited her aunt. But then that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone.

  ‘Ready to order?’

  ‘Give us a minute.’

  As I studied the menu, Susan said, ‘So tell me what happened?’

  ‘Today? We were supposed to be putting the frighteners on some morons cutting into the old man’s business.’

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘The usual. Drugs. Cutting into the old man’s territory. The girls were a surprise. No one was expecting that. Not the old man, anyway.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Say what you like about him, he has principles. His prostitutes are always of legal age. And as to people smuggling, well, only the lowest kind of animals would stoop to that.’

  ‘You sound like you admire him.’

  ‘Don’t. Just because he has principles doesn’t mean I agree with them.’

  She looked up from her menu. ‘I’m sorry.’ And she meant it, too.

  ‘It’s tough enough,’ I said.

  ‘Of course.’

  We sat in silence for a while. Studied our menus. Every time we met, there was the same awkwardness. There had been a time we were close, but the events of the last few years had served to distance us from each other. Events that might have brought other people closer together had only pushed us apart.

  I often wondered if it was more my fault than hers. There were things that should have been said or done that never were.

  I said, ‘So what now? What’s the grand plan from my masters at the SCDEA?’

  ‘No official word, but I figure … we keep going as we were. This doesn’t change anything. I mean, what does it achieve? In the bigger picture?’ I could see from the way she refused to look at me that she hated herself for sweeping what I’d discovered under the carpet. In the old days, these kind of things would have been important. To both of us. What did it say that we were unwilling to step up?

  ‘I don’t … I don’t
know,’ I said. ‘But Burns thought these guys were small time drugs dealers. This is bigger than that. I don’t know … maybe we can turn this to our advantage.’

  Hypocrisy, thy name is McNee.

  ‘Maybe. You’re the man on the inside.’

  ‘You put me there.’

  She didn’t say anything. Except, ‘So, you ready to order?’ Like we’d just been discussing perfectly ordinary business. The girl from the bar was standing behind us. How much had she heard? How much did she give a shite about?

  I looked up. Not ready to order. Barely having glanced at the menu. But I made a stab anyway, ordering the first thing my eyes fell on. ‘Sure, the pheasant.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Susan said.

  When we were alone again, she said, quietly, ‘I’m sorry how things worked out.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘So am I.’

  SIX

  There was a message waiting on my other mobile as I walked to the car. The night air was cool, the wind gently caressing my cheeks. Inside the pub, the heating had been too high, and to exit to the gentle cool of the night and the quiet of country roads felt like walking into another world.

  My mobile screen lit up bright in the dark. The message was from the old man. An address. The intent clear. No clue as to why he wanted to meet, but then I wasn’t supposed to care about such things. The rule was this: he said jump, you didn’t even ask how high.

  I drove back via country roads, passing the Bein Inn, a hidden music venue on a back road that had been a booming business for decades. I wound past small gulleys before hitting the road to Perth, merging on to the motorway and rocketing on towards Dundee, approaching from the west.

  Coming from the Perth direction, you get a sense of what the city used to be. The skyline is still peppered with the high rises that used to dominate, although these have slowly diminished as the council tries to erase the mistakes of sixties and seventies town planning. There’s a sense that the urban landscape is creeping up on the countryside; the city slowly expanding out and into the world, spreading its grey among the green.