Cry Uncle

by Russel D. McLean

  ‘I’d normally take that as a compliment.’

  ‘It is not.’

  Bako closed the door. His thug stood quietly in the corner. Clasped his hands in front of his stomach. Did a great impression of a statue. He was built like Desperate Dan. Give him a red shirt and cowboy hat, he’d have a great chance with a second career entertaining at children’s parties.

  ‘You are flexible. Morally speaking.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘You were police. Then you went into business for yourself. Still serving the law. You had principles. You put away some very bad men. Some very bad policemen, too.’

  So he knew who I was. It wasn’t like I was a state secret. Some of my cases had made the papers. He wouldn’t have to dig too deep to get that kind of information. So far, so unimpressive. ‘And?’

  ‘And then you work for Mr Burns. This seems to me an odd choice. Yes?’

  ‘Your English is excellent, Mr Bako.’

  ‘So is my French. My German. My Russian.’

  ‘A polyglot.’

  ‘Big word for such a man.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘A man of violence.’

  ‘You’re confusing me with yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps. But my violence is necessary. When you deal with the basest of human instincts, you must adapt to your environment. Your violence is personal. The man you shot, for example. He threatened your life. The lives of those you were close to.’

  ‘I can’t say it wasn’t satisfying. But I had no choice.’

  ‘And the corrupt policeman?’

  ‘That wasn’t me. I don’t know who killed him.’ Although I had my suspicions. Susan was the last person to be seen with former Deputy Chief Constable Wood. She had wanted to kill him after realizing he was directly responsible for the death of her father. But I never knew if she carried through on that need. All I knew was that someone roasted the poor bastard alive. And given the revelations that came about after his death, no one had been in a position to mourn his death, never mind search too hard for a killer.

  ‘Really? You have no idea?’

  ‘Really.’

  Bako nodded. ‘I offer you a choice.’

  ‘The same choice you offered Craig Nairn?’

  ‘You’re a much smarter man. Yes, the same choice. This city, you know it. The people, the customs, the appetites. You have seen both its civilized surface and the underbelly of vice. You are perfectly placed to work for me.’

  ‘And, as you already said, I’m morally adaptable?’

  He smiled. All teeth. Perfectly aligned teeth.

  I said, ‘There were rumours that you had died. That your empire just continued without you.’

  ‘Print the legend. Is that not what they say?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with theatricality?’

  That grin again.

  The door opened. The woman walked in. She had an assured presence. More even than Bako. The way she moved made my spine shiver. She looked at me. Then Bako. Whispered in the man’s ear.

  I wouldn’t have understood, even if I could hear.

  Bako looked at me. Then he looked at the thug. Gave the other man a small nod. Barely more than a flick of the head.

  The thug nodded. Impassive.

  Bako and the woman left the room.

  The thug stepped forward.

  I braced myself. Clenched my fists. But I was already defeated. My story would end here, in an empty room. Alone, with no one to know or care. Just me and a man who saw me as a piece of meat to be bloodied and broken.

  Did I deserve any better?

  This was about making an example of me. Others would know that I died in pain and alone in an empty room. I would become part of the Bako legend.

  I would be the unknown soldier of the war between two powerful, utterly amoral men.

  The thug grinned. His teeth were yellow. Incisors sharp. He said something I didn’t understand.

  I braced myself.

  Just one or two good punches. Draw some blood. Blacken an eye. I would be happy with that.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled a butterfly knife. ‘I am artist,’ he said, in English. ‘Body is canvas.’

  I swallowed. Focussed only on the knife. The blade.

  The thug feinted a swing. I flinched. He laughed. The knife cut only air. ‘Stay still,’ he said. ‘Be quick.’

  Aye. Right.

  He moved again. This time, I struck out, deflected his wrist and twisted inside his arms to grip his left shoulder for balance. I brought my knee into his groin.

  He wheezed and staggered back. ‘Kurva Szar!’

  I danced away. Like a boxer. Float like a butterfly. He straightened. Shook his head in an admonishing fashion. ‘Bad choice,’ he said. ‘Faszfej!’ Whatever the word meant, it wasn’t a compliment.

  ‘Aye, and fuck you, too.’ Elegant response? I was under pressure. Oscar Wilde would lose his wit faced with a man who wanted to cut his skin to ribbons. The only thing worse than being talked about, after all, is being tortured to death.

  He moved towards me again. The knife slashed out, I turned away too slow, felt a line of cold along my left arm. Looked down and saw blood. The sting came through clear and eye-opening.

  The blood dripped.

  ‘Appetiser,’ the thug said. ‘This room will paint with your blood.’

  I held my arm, kept my distance. The thug smiled. He could smell the blood. And the fear, too. He was a predator. Bako would have no need to persuade this man to the cause. He lived for blood and pain and fear. That much was in his eyes. They glinted in the dark like those of a wolf emerging from the trees in the dead of night, scenting wounded prey. He would have his flesh. And he would enjoy ripping it from the bones of a weaker, wounded animal.

  Again, he lashed out with the blade. Moving fast for a big man. I didn’t even realize he’d cut me again until I felt the soak of blood through my shirt. I stumbled and went down on my knees. He loomed over me. ‘Now we have fun.’

  I had been hurt before. But I’d never felt so alone. Perhaps because in the bad old days I’d already come to think of myself as a dead man walking; wearing my despair and loneliness like a favourite shirt, covered up by melancholy and self-pity. The last few years I had found myself again, rediscovered something of the person I had been. Thinking maybe I could build myself a normal kind of life.

  But now my life would end here, in an anonymous and empty room.

  Maybe that was fitting.

  I used to read old noir novels. My dad’s collection. Thousands of books with painted covers he’d bought on the cheap growing up, and later in second-hand stores. Authors like David Goodis, Jim Thompson. Books with characters whose lives spiralled around them no matter how much they tried to save themselves.

  Noir wasn’t just a literary style. It was a reflection of the world.

  I closed my eyes.

  There was a noise. Distant but audible. The sound of something crashing. Voices yelling.

  I waited for the knife.

  Got the sound of gunfire.

  FORTY-FOUR

  I took deep breaths. In and out. The paramedic checked his instruments. Told me I was doing good. I’d be dizzy for a while, though, and he recommended a check-up at the hospital. I didn’t argue. I was nauseous and light-headed.

  Susan climbed in the ambulance, asked the guy to give us a moment. He gave her a look I didn’t quite understand before climbing out.

  I cleared my throat. Susan sat beside me. Held my hand. I let it stay limp.

  ‘Well, this is fucked,’ she said.

  I almost laughed. Susan never sounded right swearing. Some people just don’t have that kind of voice. She could threaten you with the most polite words.

  I said, ‘Aye. Fucked. All the way.’

  ‘We got the car’s plates from CCTV footage at the safe house. Tracked them through the city through cameras. Two streets away we lost them.’

  ‘And, what, you just figure
d you’d knock on doors until you got the right one?’

  ‘Frightened a lot of blue-rinsed old dears.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did.’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. When Griggs asked me to get involved with his pet project, I saw a way of getting back at the men who ruined my father’s life.’

  ‘And you figured I’d be on the same page?’ Or, did she mean that I was one of those men?

  ‘I didn’t even think, Steed. Things between us had got strange. I wasn’t … you and me …’

  ‘Aye, when were things ever normal between us?’

  We both fell silent again.

  She said, ‘Griggs has been suspended.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Internal allegations of rogue operations and professional misconduct.’

  ‘Who blew the whistle?’

  ‘It’s a sensitive investigation. Need to know.’

  ‘Well there’s a shock,’ I said. I closed my eyes, exhaled long and slow. I was tired. The adrenaline burst from earlier was slowing. I could feel sleep stealing towards me.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Two days later, a woman by the name of Gail Mitchell met me in an interview room on the second floor of FHQ. Maybe five-five, blonde hair cut to just above her shoulders, a no-nonsense kind of attitude. Soft, educated Glasgow accent. Shook my hand when I entered the room, said I was looking well and that maybe I should sit down. She was a good liar, even managed not to look at the stitches on my face.

  When I sat down, I did it slowly. My muscles ached every time I moved. I could feel old injuries I’d almost forgotten re-establishing their presence.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Sandy Griggs.’

  Of course she did. Discipline and Complaints. Always Discipline and Complaints. Acting like your best friend when they wanted something from you.

  ‘What about Griggs?’

  ‘He reached out to you for assistance in an illegal investigation.’

  ‘I believe it was unauthorized rather than necessarily illegal,’ I said. ‘And he didn’t tell me that at the time. He’s been running this one over a year. And this is the first time anyone has noticed? What did they think he was doing with his days?’

  Mitchell ignored me. Maybe figuring I had every right to be pissed off. Maybe just not giving a toss. ‘Not only did he fail to inform his superiors of the investigation, but the methods employed were questionable at best.’

  ‘Isn’t that always the way with undercover ops?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe. You have much experience?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I do.’ She let that one hang for a moment. Then: ‘Tell me how Griggs reached out to you.’

  ‘With a closed fist.’ That earned me what might have been a smile. Or possibly indigestion. Either way, Mitchell lost the expression fast, and stayed quiet until I expanded on my answer. She wasn’t here to make friends. She just wanted the truth.

  I told her about how Griggs had approached me at a low point. How he manipulated my past mistakes so that I had no choice but to say yes to his proposal. I explained that Griggs had become increasingly monomaniacal over the course of our working together. ‘He doesn’t just want to arrest David Burns. He wants to crucify the man.’

  Mitchell listened to my story dispassionately. Occasionally asked for clarification. But mostly she just let me talk. And I wanted to talk. To tell someone what had happened. All these months of keeping silent, I couldn’t help but let it out.

  By the time I was finished, I was exhausted. Short of breath. Taking in gulps of air between sentences.

  Mitchell offered me a glass of water.

  We sat there for a moment. No words. Nothing.

  Finally ‘I’m sorry. For everything that’s happened. We will do our best to show that none of this was your idea. You were sucked into another man’s private vendetta. You had no choice in your actions.’

  Oh, she didn’t know the half of it.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  Just a moment’s hesitation. So I answered the question for her: ‘I act like nothing’s happened? And you do your thing?’

  ‘There are procedures.’

  ‘There are always procedures.’

  ‘We need to substantiate—’

  I shook my head. ‘Save it. Really, I know the song. Every note.’

  ‘You’ve been patient this long. Just a while longer. Work with us. We can fix this.’

  ‘And if Griggs calls me?’

  ‘Which we both know he will. If that happens, call me. We go from there.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Right now, Griggs is paranoid. He knows that he’s been running an illegal operation. And by now he has to have figured out he’s been dropped in it. He’s smart. Off the charts, really. One of the reasons the SCDEA snapped him up. His only hope right now is that you and Susan still believe every word he’s told you. Or that you’re both scared enough of what he knows to continue working with him.’

  ‘Just tell me one thing.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What is Griggs’s issue with the old man? What started all of this?’

  Mitchell shook her head. ‘Now that’s a story,’ she said.

  FORTY-SIX

  2006.

  I was still in uniform. Still awkward. Unsure of what I really wanted from the job. Beat work and clean up jobs were the order of the day.

  In the canteen, drinking black coffee, pushing through one of those shifts that never seemed to end, a hand on my shoulder. ‘McNee, right? You’re up. With me.’

  The hand of a senior detective. The hand of God. Selecting me and three other uniforms. More chance than design, I’d realize in retrospect. In our eyes, Griggs was righteous. Heroic. Some of the girls figured he looked like David Caruso. The cool David Caruso of CSI: Miami, not the washed-out would-be movie star he had almost become after quitting NYPD Blue.

  God handed down skut work. I found myself standing outside a door, making sure only SOCOs and detectives accessed the scene. A murder, of course. Not that I got to see much of it. Just a corridor. An anonymous corridor in an anonymous building.

  We all start somewhere. That was what I told myself.

  What I remember was some guy arriving at the door, telling me he had access. Same age as Griggs. Smaller. Hard around the edges. Kind of look you’d figure life hadn’t been easy on him. Bags under the eyes. Leather jacket worn tight like armour. A stare with the intensity of a live power socket. I didn’t want to let him in. But Griggs told me this guy was central to the case.

  Turned out the guy was an investigator. An old friend of Griggs. The two of them took over the scene. Cutting through standard protocol. What amazed me at the time: everyone just accepting the fact. As though men like Griggs could simply work to their own rules. But while Griggs was the man everyone respected, it was the guy in the leather jacket who seemed to call the shots. Griggs trusted him completely. Maybe more than some of his brother police. That stung a little, I guess. Looking back on it, I’d been uncomfortable with the idea of a senior detective breaking procedure in such a way. Back then, I’d believed utterly in the structure of the police, in the work that we did. It would take several years, and becoming a victim myself, to disillusion me to the point of walking away from it all.

  Griggs had been a hero that day. The murder, linked to a conspiracy, sent down a dealer named Mick the Mick. Mick, who would later come back into my life as the trigger man in the murder of DCI Ernie Bright.

  So what happened?

  How did Griggs go from God to some lesser demon?

  How did he wind up going from the man I admired, to the man who was responsible for screwing up my life so completely?

  What happened?

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Mitchell wasn’t so sure herself what happened to Griggs. She had an idea, but couldn’t prove anything. A few things had happened to Gri
ggs during his last few years with Tayside that might explain the changes in his behaviour.

  Starting with the charges brought against him for police brutality.

  ‘The accusations were nonsense. Griggs was an outstanding officer. A force of moral constancy. Ask me five or six years – even five or six weeks – ago for a man who embodied the ideals of the Scottish police force, and I’d have said Sandy Griggs.’

  Following the incident – Griggs had been set up by a local politician with a grudge – Griggs continued his career with enthusiasm and determination. Occasionally, he skated close to the edge of acceptable conduct, but he always did the right thing. Never once led D&C to believe he was anything other than a dedicated and upstanding officer. His flaws were human. Relatable. Understandable.

  When he joined the SCDEA, Griggs had been a young hotshot. He had proved himself on the street. They expected great things from him on a national level. But something got in the way. He developed an obsession with a particular Dundee criminal: David Burns.

  ‘Do you know what started it?’ I asked.

  Mitchell hesitated before answering. She played for time by rubbing her right hand along the back of her neck, as though massaging the answer out of herself. ‘A number of things. But mostly … Griggs made a connection between the man who tried to frame him all those years ago and Burns. It was a connection the SCDEA had been aware of for some time, but Griggs had been kept in the dark.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The politician in question was … well, he was involved in some less than salubrious hobbies …’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘What are the two things that catch most folk out?’

  ‘Sex and drugs.’

  ‘Rock and roll comes a distant third. But, aye. Sex. He was …’ She didn’t quite know how to put it. Her impassive expression collapsed for a moment. Why bother to hide her disgust? ‘He liked to get his privates out in public places. Griggs caught him doing it once, and the bastard never got over the humiliation. But that was just the start. The man had a thing for working girls, too. And, well, he got caught out again. But this time, Griggs had nothing to do with it.’