‘They’re police,’ she told him, ‘looking for your father.’
‘So are we,’ the boy said. ‘He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Graham,’ his mother snapped. Too much information, kid.
‘Is that so, Mrs Welsh?’ McGurk asked.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, ‘but my husband often stays in town,’ she added, ‘if he has a business appointment that runs late.’
‘So,’ I chipped in, ‘when do you expect him home? We’re not in a rush. We can wait for him.’
‘No,’ she said, sharply. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I have no idea when he’ll be back.’
‘Did you know he wasn’t coming home, Mrs Welsh?’ I pressed.
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but as I said, that isn’t unusual.’
‘That’s bollocks, Mum,’ the boy Graham shouted, taking us all by surprise. ‘Dad never stays out all night. You know that.’ He was scared, no question.
And maybe he had reason to be. First Varley jumps bail and vanishes, then cousin Freddy goes AWOL; the type of coincidence in which I have never believed.
Bob Skinner
Clyde Houseman. The name had been kicking around in my head since Amanda’s call. I knew it was somewhere in my memory banks, but I couldn’t access the file that held it.
I fixed the kids their lunch as soon as we got home, then asked Trish if she’d keep an eye on them, as I had an unexpected business meeting. Officially it was her day off, but she had nothing planned, and she’s flexible.
Normally, if I know that company’s coming I leave the driveway gate open, but I didn’t want any of my village pals turning up without warning, so I left it closed. My house has always been secure but when the First Minister, as she was then, moved in, it was stepped up. Now I have motion sensors in every area of the garden and video cameras that are so carefully placed that an expert couldn’t find them.
One of them picked up my visitor before he’d even pressed the button on the entryphone. He was tall and dark-haired, wearing razorcreased trousers and a navy blue blazer that was so well cut it was impossible to guess anything about his body shape, although the way he carried himself suggested that he was a fit guy. The clothes, and his grooming, screamed ‘military’.
I opened the single gate to the garden path without even asking him to identify himself. I’ve met enough spooks to know one when I see one, given advance warning. As he approached the house I opened the front door and stepped outside.
‘Mr Houseman.’ I extended a hand. As he shook it I studied his face. Yes, I had met him before; I was certain of it, but just as ignorant of the where or when. Nothing about him offered a clue. He was clean-shaven; his hair was short and looked freshly trimmed. At first glance I thought he was tanned, but at second, I wasn’t so sure. He was paler-skinned than Trish, but probably of mixed race, some Afro-Caribbean genes blended with the white.
‘Come in,’ I said, stepping aside to let him enter. ‘Let’s go in here.’ I showed him into my small private study, off the hall, where I’d watched him approach on the monitor. Normally I take visitors into the garden room, but this one wasn’t run-of-the-mill.
I sat at my desk; he took the chair alongside it. I opened the small beer fridge I keep in there, and offered him a drink. He peered inside and chose an Irn Bru; I chose the same, but I had a hard time resisting the Red Bull that was in there. That would have negated all my selfdenial. I hadn’t had a coffee all day and I was beginning to experience the withdrawal symptoms that Sarah had forecast.
All the time I was thinking, trying to nail him down, and all the time he knew it, as he looked back at me, with a faint, nervous smile on his face, incongruous when set against his bearing.
I don’t like losing at anything, but sometimes you have to admit your failures. ‘Go on,’ I said to him. ‘Tell me.’
He offered not a word in reply. Instead he slipped two fingers into his breast pocket and produced a white business card. I assumed that it was one of his, but as he passed it to me, face down, I could see that it was old, curled at the corners, and had a couple of stains on it.
I took it from him, turned it over. . and saw, beneath the police crest, my own name: ‘Robert M. Skinner, Detective Chief Inspector’.
‘Go back fifteen years,’ he murmured, but I was there already.
A call on the mother of a murder victim, a hard-as-nails cow called Bella Watson, in one of those places in Edinburgh that you will never see on a postcard. I’d taken the wrong car with me, my current BMW rather than the battered old Land Rover that was my usual work vehicle in those days. There had been a bunch of kids on the street, eyeing it up, and I’d singled out the biggest, the obvious leader, and explained to him what would happen to him, personally, if there was a mark on it when I got back. When I did, it was pristine. The lad had expected to be bunged for not touching it; I’d explained to him that if certain people in his street saw him taking money from a cop, it could be fatal. I wasn’t being a cheapskate; that was his world.
I’d seen something in the youngster as I spoke to him, something in his eyes that said that although he was trapped in his environment, he didn’t belong there. Now that I’d found my mental file, I could replay our conversation word for word.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Clyde Houseman.’
‘Well, Clyde, if it ever occurs to you that it might be a good idea to get out of this hellhole and get a life that gives you a chance to be different, you call me, on one of those numbers, and I’ll show you how.’
And I gave him, with none of his pals seeing it, a business card, the one that he’d just handed back to me.
I felt a huge surge of pleasure, maybe even pride, as I examined it. ‘All this time,’ I murmured.
‘Fifteen years,’ he replied. ‘At first I kept it as a reminder. Eventually I held on to it in the hope I’d be able to give it back to you one day.’
I laughed. ‘Amanda said you were bricking it. That’s why?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s why.’ He seemed to have left his accent behind in the slums.
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Tell me your story.’
‘You scared me that day,’ he replied, ‘on two levels. One, I was a sixteen-year-old kid, the toughest in our street, no question. I didn’t think anyone in the world was harder than me, until I looked you in the eye and realised I was very wrong. Then on top of that there was what you said; it made me look around, and ahead. I lived with my mother and my stepfather in those days. She was a serial shoplifter and he was a serial alcoholic with a gambling habit; hopeless, the pair of them. My father was long gone, doing life in Peterhead Prison for stabbing a taxi driver in a row over the fare. When I met you I was on the fringes of grown-up gang stuff, not dealing, but protecting dealers. I’d never used drugs myself, but sooner or later I would have. You were right, sir; I was living in a hellhole, but it was all I knew so I didn’t recognise it as such. When I met you, you opened my eyes. Nobody had ever said anything positive to me before, never.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you use the card?’
‘I had to get further away,’ Clyde replied, ‘as far away from Edinburgh as I could, far away from everything I’d known until then.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I joined the Royal Marines. I walked into an armed forces careers office and said in effect, “Please help me, I have a shit life and I want to be different.” They told me I had to prove myself and I did. I blew the preliminary course away; I was a fit strong boy, and a good swimmer, so the physical stuff came easy to me. On top of that I had a stack of O Grades from school, so the intelligence tests were a breeze. To cut a long story down a little I was accepted. I served as a marine for three years, around the world, and I loved it; I made corporal by the time I was twenty, then I was invited to apply for a commission. Two years later, I joined the SBS, the Special Boat Service. That’s. .’
‘I know what it is,�
� I told him. ‘Did you see much action?’
He nodded, and his eyes went a little dead. ‘Iraq; I did a couple of tours there operating out of Basra, targeting terrorists the Iranians were slipping over the border. When we caught them we sent them back.’
‘Intact?’
He looked at me. ‘What do you think?’ Answer enough.
‘After that,’ he continued, ‘it was Afghanistan; black ops.’
‘Not too many boats in Afghanistan,’ I observed.
‘They put our skills to use where they were most needed, sir.’ He glanced at the door; it was closed. ‘We were on constant stand-by. If intel picked up reliable information that a Taliban leader was on the move, we’d be mobilised. The Americans would watch them by satellite; if a window opened, we’d go in very fast by chopper, kill the target and get out again before the opposition even realised they were one down.’
‘Winning their hearts and minds,’ I murmured.
‘That was someone else’s job,’ Clyde said. ‘Ours was to blow their heads off.’
I nodded. ‘I know. So,’ I went on, ‘how did you get from being SBS in Afghanistan to being MI5 in Glasgow?’
‘My SBS engagement ended just over three years ago. I was Captain Houseman by that time, back in the Marines with a more conventional career ahead of me, but I had the sense that I’d plateaued. My special forces experience wasn’t going to help me climb the ladder; there aren’t many opportunities at major and above, and my time out of the mainstream had put me at the back of the queue. I had a conversation back in Plymouth with my unit commander. About a week later I was invited to go to London for a meeting in Whitehall. It turned out to be a job interview, with Amanda Dennis. She told me that the security service was responding to the terrorist threat by expanding its operations across the country and was looking for people with. . a broad range of skills, was how she put it. A few days after that, she offered me a job, and I accepted.’
‘What’s your area? I asked. I know how the security service works; a few years ago I was asked to help it sort out some in-house problems.
‘Counter-terrorism,’ he replied. ‘I spent my first two years in Thames House, then I was moved up to Scotland, in charge of the Glasgow regional office.’
‘How long have you been there?’
‘Best part of a year.’
‘So how come I haven’t heard of you before?’
‘Amanda told me not to get involved with the police,’ he said, bluntly. ‘She feels that the Strathclyde force is too big, and that because of its size the risk of leaks is unacceptable. Its Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Section feeds information to SO15 at Scotland Yard and we work with them. My contact with the locals is at a minimum.’
‘So, Clyde,’ I asked, ‘why are you so keen to talk to me today, other than to give me back that card?’
‘The image you sent to Amanda last night, the body that was buried for you to find; we know who he was.’
Mario McGuire
Once Sarah’s people had taken the burnt logs away, Lowell Payne and I were surplus to requirements at the crime scene, four feet that Dorward’s crew didn’t need on their ground. My appetite hadn’t been too badly affected, but I wasn’t in an Asian mood any longer; no, my taste buds were talking Italian. Since I was within sight of home, I called Paula, to see if she was okay, and to ask if I could bring a pal with me for whatever we could throw together.
She said yes, on both counts.
I could tell that Payne was impressed by our home, and doing his best not to let it show. I didn’t feel like explaining our family circumstances to him so I left him to ponder on how a cop could afford such a pad, even on a chief super’s salary of around eighty grand at the top of the scale.
I was going to make the lunch myself, but Paula wouldn’t hear of it. She ordered us outside, on to the deck. I gave Payne a beer and watched him with a trace of envy: I knew I’d have to drive again, if only to get him back to his car, and with me, one thing usually leads to another.
My lovely other half joined us about ten minutes later with a couple of sandwiches consisting of warm focaccia bread, spread with olive oil rather than butter and stuffed with sweet red peppers, olives stoned and halved, feta cheese and anchovies. Sure as hell, they put pakora in perspective.
She didn’t join us; she’d eaten already. ‘You ready for tonight?’ I asked her.
‘Yup,’ she replied. ‘Aileen called to finalise the arrangements. Chauffeur-driven car no less. She’s staying in Glasgow just now, so it’s easier for her.’
I don’t know why, but that made me a little curious. She was in Glasgow, the boss had passed on the show; anything to be read in to that? Nah, no chance! Away you go, McGuire, you’ve been a cop too long.
‘I ruined her day, I’m afraid,’ Paula continued. ‘She asked what I was wearing and I told her, a red dress.’
‘So?’
Payne laughed; he got the message.
She nodded in his direction. ‘Exactly. So is she. I should have known, her being Labour and everything. However, all is not lost, I remembered that I’ve got a trouser suit I had let out at the waist just in case. It’s black satin and formal enough for tonight. So she can breathe easy again; nobody will wonder which of us is the politician.’
‘My darling,’ I assured her, ‘I don’t know anyone who looks less like Maggie Thatcher than you do.’
‘Aileen doesn’t either,’ she protested.
‘Facially no, but she has that same air of imperious authority about her. And when she smiles. . never trust politicians when they beam at you. Isn’t that right, Lowell?’
‘I never trust them period,’ he admitted. ‘It’s a trait I picked up from my niece.’
‘Your niece?’ I repeated.
‘Yes, Alex. My daughter’s her cousin, remember; named Myra after her late mum. Didn’t you know that? She visits us every so often to see her Aunt Jean and Junior.’
‘I see.’ I knew about the relationship, but not that he’d a kid. So Alex didn’t trust politicians either; well, well, McGuire. What do you detect from that?
I fetched him another beer, and had just set it on the table when my phone started to sing Baila Moreno. . my phone being a big Zucchero fan. I checked; it was Luke Skywalker. I allowed Sugar another couple of bars then took the call.
‘Sam,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
‘We’ve identified the van, boss,’ he replied. There was nothing in his tone that hinted he was about to make my day. ‘We found the chassis number; they hide them away, so it was still legible, and I was able to run a trace. It’s registered to Anglesey Construction Limited, of Fisher Industrial Park, Straiton.’
I couldn’t believe it first time so I made him repeat the name.
‘Anglesey Construction Limited. Does that mean something to you, boss?’
‘Yes, it does. Problem being I haven’t a fucking clue what that might be, or how it might fit. Thanks. Let me think about it.’ I hit the end button and turned to Lowell. ‘Guess what?’ I said to him. ‘That van along there belongs to Freddy Welsh’s company.’
Remember the domino theory? Maybe you don’t but it was the justification the Americans found for the Vietnam War, that if they didn’t stop the Communist advance there, all the neighbouring states would collapse like dominoes stood on end, all the way to Thailand and Malaysia.
I don’t know why that came into my mind, but it did. I must be psychic, because at that moment, with that vision in my mind, Zucchero started to sing again.
Sarah Grace
Sometimes I worry about myself. I have the feeling that there must be something wrong with the soul of a woman who can look at the aftermath of the darkest human suffering with happiness in her heart.
That’s why I quit pathology when I did. I wasn’t past my sell-by date, or even close to it, but I had an underlying feeling that I should be, and that I had become desensitised. In other words, I felt guilty about liking my macabre job too much.
<
br /> It didn’t take me long to get that out of my system, just a few months back in mainstream medicine. I was treated well in practice, my workload wasn’t excessive and I didn’t make any life-threatening mistakes, but I found nothing inspiring about it and at the end of every day, I got home feeling flat. I’m not saying that I wished my patients were dead, but it came home to me that I preferred them that way.
Joe Hutchinson got it right; I’m an okay doctor, but a gifted pathologist. Maybe that’s what I needed to prove to myself all along.
I caught Roshan giving me an odd look as the wagon crew. . the para-morticians, as little Joe calls them. . took the entwined corpses from their super-sized body bag and laid them on the examination table, and I realised why. I was smiling. ‘Sorry,’ I murmured. ‘I was somewhere else.’
‘Wish I was,’ one of the bearers grumbled. ‘Wish I was anywhere else.’
‘Then go,’ I told him, ‘but first go get a gurney, please, and set it alongside the table, for when we get these two separated.’
They did as I asked then left. I have a lot of respect for those people; they’re not ghouls, they have a job that very few people would tackle, and they do it efficiently, respectfully and without complaint.
‘What do you see, Roshan?’ I asked when we were alone in the autopsy room. Sammy Pye had sent Griff Montell along as a witness, but he had chosen to stay in the viewing gallery. I didn’t blame him. The table was fully lit, giving us a much more detailed view of the remains than we’d had in the van. The extractor fans were going full blast, but they couldn’t do much about the smell. I can’t describe it adequately; the closest I can get is, imagine marinating a steak in petrol, then putting it in one of big George Foreman’s grills and forgetting about it for an hour or two, multiply that by a dozen or so, and you’ll be in the vicinity of what it was like.
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