Cry Uncle

by Russel D. McLean

  I came out and towelled down gingerly. My body ached. My muscles strained. The cuts and grazes in my back were raw, pulsating. Reminded me of their presence with the insistence of an ignored toddler.

  I got dressed in a fresh shirt and jeans. Was half done buttoning up when the buzzer went. I answered, already knowing whose finger was on the button.

  Malone didn’t waste time on false concern. Just took one look at me and said, ‘You get a simple task and it winds up being a bloodbath. This is getting to be a habit with you.’

  ‘How’s the old man taking it?’

  ‘Why don’t you come and find out for yourself?’

  Now there was an offer you couldn’t refuse.

  ‘Animals!’

  The old man raging. Face scarlet. Veins pulsing in the right side of his head. Ready to throttle someone. Anyone. He had always suppressed this kind of anger in my presence. But I’d known it was there.

  I understood how he had got his reputation. I could see the thug – maybe even the killer – he had once been.

  It reached to the primal part of my brain, made me want to run.

  But I didn’t.

  ‘Animals!’ He paced. Kicked up dust from the floor of the disused office space. Stomped over to an old pine desk and gripped it underneath. ‘Animals!’ He threw the desk over. Making the kind of sound you could have heard over the noise of a Spinal Tap gig.

  These days, he looked his age, but there was still something of the old strength inside David Burns. He had been fuelled by anger in his youth. Still had it in him, despite his claims to the contrary.

  Malone and I stood in silence by the door. Let him scream and rage. Talk to himself. Rant. Roar. When he finally acknowledged our presence, he spoke to me directly. Maybe because he had already told Malone what he had to say or maybe because he trusted me. As he always said, we had a kinship.

  ‘He was nobody. He was innocent.’

  Hardly. But in the things that mattered, Robert Burns had really been a nobody. Taking him out like that was senseless. Served no purpose. But then, maybe that was the point.

  ‘There are rules.’

  Rules that even Burns had broken over and over again. But I didn’t tell him that. He believed completely in the rules when they suited him. Like a religious zealot who covets his neighbour’s wife, worships false idols and still does not see his own hypocrisy.

  ‘Unwritten?’

  He laughed. ‘They don’t need to be written. It’s what separates us from the psychopaths. You don’t hurt a man’s family. Not unless they’re involved. Not unless they’re soldiers.’

  ‘Then we’re at war?’ Using ‘we’ without even thinking. I was beginning to empathize with the old man. See things from his point of view. Losing my sense of perspective.

  ‘Always.’

  He turned away. Hunched over and shivered. Crying? I couldn’t be sure. When he turned back to face me, his eyes were red. But from anger or sadness I couldn’t really say.

  Family is a funny thing. We can hate them. We can despise them, and yet still love them.

  They had killed his nephew. Without warning. Crossed the line.

  God only knew what the old man would do, now.

  ‘They’ve forgotten,’ Burns said. ‘Forgotten who I am. They see a frail old fucker. They’ve forgotten the lessons their fathers fucking learned.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They know who you are. That’s why—’

  ‘You don’t understand, McNee. Don’t know you ever will. In your way, you’re like them. Only aware of an old man with a reputation.’

  A reputation for cruelty and hatred. A man who once nailed a priest to a cross over an unpaid debt. Whose idea of mercy had been leaving behind a hammer to pry loose the nails.

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘When I was young, my guts burned with ambition. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to get what I wanted. I lost some of that when I got older. That’s what success does. Dulls fire. Dulls the edge of your soul. Makes you forget the very things you were fighting for in the first place.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I’m an old man. Cautious. To these lads, I’m little more than a stepping stone. One more corpse they have to step over to get wherever it is they’re going.’

  ‘They are what you were.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They think they’re worse.’

  ‘And are they?’

  ‘Son, these little shitebags don’t know what kind of hell they’re about to face. They killed my brother’s boy. They broke the rules. They’ll learn … there’s always a price.’

  The old man could be decent, in his own way, to those he felt deserved it. Callous when it came to those he didn’t care about one way or another. But when you crossed him, his wrath was righteous, terrifying and indiscriminate.

  His anger had not faded with youth. It had merely retreated. Gone into hibernation. But the death of his nephew had reawakened the old terror. A monster was roaring, raising its head.

  It was a warning. A dark sign of things to come.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Craig Nairn.

  Small time hood. No one important. A charge sheet like so many others. Petty shite, mostly. Some jail time. Suspended sentence. Bad hair. Worse skin. A line in shellsuits and white trainers with knock-off branding on the side. Liked to call people ‘Slick’. Saw it in a Hollywood movie and thought it was bad-ass. One of the reasons he got picked up on three muggings, calling people ‘Slick’, people remembering the way it sounded, his nasal tones mangling the inherent cool he’d been aiming for. He was the kind of prick who blamed bad luck every time he got pinched, failed to see that he was simply incompetent.

  He thought he was Tom Sizemore in Heat, but looked more like Joe Pesci. Gone to seed.

  So what was Nairn doing running an underground people smuggling operation? Busting in on Burns’s territories? Arranging a car bomb just to send a message? None of this was consistent with his history.

  He wasn’t working alone.

  He couldn’t be.

  Didn’t have the nous.

  So who? Who was his backer? His silent partner?

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. The way she’d smiled at me.

  Something about her made alarm bells ring in my brain. She was the one who planted the bomb. Had to be. But female explosive experts were rare. At least, statistically speaking. If it was her, then I figured someone had to know who she was.

  To find her, I’d be fishing in a shallow pool. Odds were, if she was contracted, then someone somewhere knew her name and her reputation. To send a message like that, you don’t subcontract to an unknown quantity. Not when you run an operation like the one muscling in on the old man’s turf.

  So I went fishing. Called in old favours.

  Went to Perth prison for a meeting with a firebug I arrested years ago. Twitchy little bollocks by the name of Teale. Had a rat-like face and a habit of biting his nails down so short they kept bleeding. He’d suck at the blood, too. Like that was going to stop it coming. Or maybe he liked to think he had vampiric tendencies.

  He sat across from me, wagging his head back and forth, maybe thinking that made him look confident. Like most criminals, his self-image was at odds with the way he actually looked.

  ‘You retired, then?’ he said. ‘Or they threw you out?’

  I could smell his breath across the other side of the table. As though his tongue was rotting inside his mouth.

  He’d been inside over eight years. Missed my meltdown. But word would have reached him. The gossip in prison walls stretches with desperation for news of the outside world. ‘You know the story already,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, and it’s a doozy.’ Nibbled at his left ring finger. ‘Killer.’

  Word travels. Even when that word is unproven.

  I said, ‘Sure. I killed a man. In self-defence. You killed families.’

  ‘They were accidental deaths.’ Another delicate little chew. Then he loo
ked up and smiled. ‘Some of them.’

  ‘You set fire to their houses.’

  He shrugged.

  Most of Teale’s career had been murder for hire. But he was a true-blue pyromaniac. Liked to watch things burn. Got lucky that his personal perversion could turn a profit. Teale reticent about his client list when they finally got him. With a few notable exceptions. After all, there is rarely honour among thieves, however hard they might try to convince you otherwise.

  There’s even less of it among arsonists.

  ‘I want to talk to you about others of your kind.’

  ‘Of my kind?’

  ‘Arsonists.’

  He licked his lips. ‘Pyromaniacs.’

  ‘Pyromania is a rare condition.’

  ‘That’s why we’re like family. No one else can really understand.’

  ‘You said that when you killed people, it was an accident.’

  ‘The families, yes.’

  ‘The families of those you targeted.’

  ‘You know … it didn’t really matter to me. They were just … they were unlucky, I suppose.’

  ‘It was about the fire.’

  ‘It always is. For us.’

  He used to hang around internet chat rooms. The ones on the dark side of the net. The ones where you only got in by knowing the right people, the right words, the right attitude. The dark net is real. Look hard enough online, you’ll find communities for almost every perversion you can think of. Most of them hidden. Most of them anonymous.

  ‘I’m looking for a woman.’

  ‘Thought you were looking for a fellow pyro.’

  ‘I know the statistics. Ninety percent of arsonists are male.’

  ‘And young.’

  ‘You’re not young anymore.’

  He thought about that. ‘No, I’m not. It’s horrible, to look in the mirror, see that grey slipping in around the temples. I thought maybe I’d look sophisticated. Cary Grant, you know? North by Northwest.’ He flashed yellow choppers. I tried not to breath in, catch another whiff of his breath.

  ‘No such luck,’ I said.

  ‘Still, I have a certain something.’

  And that’s why I’d made sure there was a table between us. In case that something was catching.

  ‘I had the guard pull your phone records.’

  ‘I call my mother every Sunday.’

  ‘Your mother’s dead.’

  ‘Wondered why she didn’t answer.’

  ‘You made four calls to one number in particular. A mobile. It’s dead, now. Like your mother. Of course. We think you were talking to someone called Craig Nairn.’

  ‘There’s a nice Scottish name. Not exactly feminine though.’ He tipped his head to one side. Making me play this one out. My time was precious. His stretched out in front of him. For men like Teale, life could really mean life. No one wanted him on the outside. Not even the social workers who had regular meetings with him. He was the kind of psychopath who couldn’t hide. His banal evil was a second skin. Slimy. A corpse dredged from the bogs. He knew it, too. Delighted in the way he made people feel.

  When we pulled him in all those years ago, he’d smiled all the way to the station, sitting in the back of the Jam Sandwich, stretching his lips over his teeth in what might have been a smile.

  ‘The two of you shared a youth officer back in the eighties. You and Nairn. You knew each other.’

  ‘That’s a leap, Mr McNee.’ Emphasizing the ‘Mr’, letting me know that he was no longer afraid of me now that I no longer held rank. Not that he ever had been, of course. ‘Two lads who shared a probation officer decide to become best friends and later on in life they arrange to torch the fuck out of some would-be tough guy from Edinburgh. Sounds like one of those touching wee films you see late at night. Channel 4, maybe. BBC 2.’

  ‘Aye, it does,’ I said. ‘And you’re right. That wee tale would be a stretch. If we didn’t have previous record of correspondence between you and Nairn.’

  ‘What did we talk about, then?’

  ‘He wanted a job done.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. Held out his hands. Palms up. Wrists exposed. ‘It’s a fair cop. I talked to the lad. He asked me if I could arrange something. I told him, no. How could I? I was inside.’

  ‘So you gave him a name. A contact. A fellow pyro. A member of the family.’

  ‘Nah. Besides, how the fuck would I know anyone these days? They monitor what you do online, you know. If you’re allowed on at all.’ He let his arms flop. Then pulled the right one up to nibble at the nail of his index finger.

  ‘The name of someone who wouldn’t be known to the police. The name of someone that could remain anonymous.’

  ‘What you’re digging for, is it this lassie you think is a fellow pyro?’

  I knew a guy on the Dundee Herald. Cameron Connelly. A reporter. From time to time he did me favours. We might be friends if our relationship wasn’t purely utilitarian. He once told me that when you go in to interview a subject, it works best if you don’t ask questions to which you don’t already know the answers.

  In other words:

  Do your research.

  I knew who I was looking for. Looking for a female pyro means fishing in a shallow pool. Most investigative work is trawling through information, sifting for the nuggets you can use. After a while you get good at finding what you don’t even know that you’re looking for.

  Like a name in a file of known associates.

  A name no one else would look twice at.

  ‘Four years ago, you corresponded with a woman by the name of Gemma Fairstead. She was one of those prison groupies. Contacted you online through a group known as Prison Chicks.’

  ‘Oh,’ Teale said. ‘Her.’

  ‘You two hit it off.’

  ‘You’ve seen the records, then? Of our wee chats?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Gives Fifty Shades a wee run for its money, aye? Maybe I should publish some of those letters. Might give a few of those sex-starved wifies a thrill to read what me and her were talking about doing to each other.’

  ‘She shared your fascination.’ Their messages weren’t just about sex. There was fireplay, too. Talk of burning flesh, cauterising wounds. The same tone others might have used to talk about bondage and S&M. But theirs was an even more peculiar kink.

  Fire and sex.

  What they had in common.

  ‘You never met,’ I said. ‘Never in the flesh.’

  ‘Oh, but if we had …’

  ‘Some of these women, they marry prisoners.’

  ‘Conjugal rights.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, we figured why spoil what we have?’

  ‘Also you lied about how you looked.’

  ‘It’s the internet. We can be anyone we want. That’s the modern world, McNee. Nothing’s what it seems. Appearance doesn’t matter anymore. Not in the digital.’

  ‘Wonder whether she’d have been excited smelling the grease from your burning flesh as she was thinking about burning the toned skin of George Clooney.’

  ‘I said we have the same eyes. That’s all.’

  And the rest.

  ‘So the relationship went the way they all do?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But she was a firebug like you. Had a thing for explosive blazes. The big bang, right?’

  ‘You did read our letters. Naughty boy.’

  ‘She killed a man last night.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I saw her.’

  ‘Tell the cops.’

  ‘This isn’t about the cops.’

  ‘It’s not?’

  I leaned forward. Voice low. ‘You said it yourself. I’m no longer police. And if you’ve been keeping your ear to the ground like I think you have, you’ll know who I work for.’

  ‘Wondered when you’d get to throwing the old man’s name around.’

  ‘I’m a messenger. He knows what I know.’

  �
��Nah. Nah.’ But he was shaking. No longer biting his nails. Picking at them. Not sucking the blood, just letting it swell at the grooves around his fingertips. He understood what I was telling him. And he would never say anything, but it scared the shite out of him.

  ‘You said it yourself. Earlier. I killed a man. Shot him.’

  ‘That was … I mean it was about … Your wife …’

  ‘Fiancée, but it doesn’t matter. Something like that happens, it changes you.’

  ‘Not like …’

  ‘What did you hear about me?’

  ‘That you killed a man. Shot him in the chest.’

  ‘Why did I shoot him?’

  ‘There were stories.’

  ‘Do you believe them?’

  He bit his upper lip. Turned his head so he didn’t have to look at me. I leaned forward, made sure I was in his eyeline. ‘Do you believe them?’

  ‘You were police. You were …’

  ‘Look me in the eyes, tell me whether you think I killed a man? Tell me if you think I would do it again.’

  He looked at me.

  I spent years denying my darker side. Fooled myself with morality and ethical justification. Acted like I was a white knight, the man who rode to the rescue of those in need. I justified every decision, told myself that I believed in the spirit of the law, if not always the letter. That I was the kind of man who could go places that the law never could.

  Down these mean streets a man must walk, who is not himself mean …

  But he is mean. As mean as those streets. Meaner, maybe. He couldn’t survive if he wasn’t. The world doesn’t look kindly on the good and the just. It doesn’t care.

  Burns told me that we were the same.

  I was beginning to realize that he was right.

  Except that he had accepted who he was long ago. Learned to live with it. What separated us were what we cared about, the things we held in esteem. He cared for his family, for those close to him and for himself. I worried about other people, about those who were not mean enough to survive.

  I would kill to protect them.

  I had killed.

  Forget the justifications I gave myself.

  I killed to protect the innocent.

  To avenge the dead.

  Burns killed because it was convenient to do so.

  And looking in my eyes, in that moment, Teale saw the truth. Understood who and what I was. That I was worse than he could ever hope to be. Because I had killed for what I believed. I hadn’t murdered by accident or simply by not caring. I had killed for a purpose. A cause. And because of that, I could do it again.