by Caro Ramsay
He wiped the sweat and vomit from his face, rubbed the unthinkable from his shirt, and began to walk home.
He was still walking when the police car drew up behind him.
Friday
2 July 2010
1.30 A.M.
‘I think you’re supposed to stay here,’ said Batten. ‘Right here in this hospital room. If you go anywhere else, and Brenda finds out, you’ll be wishing they’d left you up against that tree. And Howlett is threatening to put you under armed guard.’
‘Bit late for that.’ Anderson scowled at the peg in the back of his hand. ‘Does Brenda know?’
‘I think she got a watered-down version but she knows you are OK. I told her they are keeping you in so they can run bloods off you every ten minutes. O’Hare was telling me that you have R2 on the streets here – so, you’re moving medical science forward just by lying there.’ He handed Anderson a lemon-coloured drink. ‘This contains all sorts of sugars and electrolytes. You could run a marathon on it. Though you’d fail the drug test.’
Anderson looked up, feeling as though he might smile if he could remember how. ‘What happened, Mick?’
‘The moment Lambie identified Moffat from the CCTV footage, a squad car went out to the Lodge on the Loch; they got there not long after you left. A nice young couple said you walked past them to answer your mobile, just as Moffat went up to the bar. They watched you because they thought you were leaving and were going to nick the table. And they noticed that Moffat went up to the bar even though the tables outside have waitress service. That’s how the drug got in your drink. Then he must have waited in the car park and followed you out. He knew you wouldn’t get far. What we don’t know is who shot him, or the other guy. And why did they miss you? Good job you’re not overweight; maybe they didn’t see you hidden behind the tree.’
‘I think you missed out a big chunk there.’
‘OK, Moffat’s head was blown off with a high-velocity bullet, by a crack shot with a very professional piece of kit. They’re looking for a match on the bullet.’
‘It was a kill shot. So, why did he let me walk away? Walk – I was bloody staggering! He could have got me any time. All he needed was a couple of seconds to reload and he could have blown my head away as well.’
‘Go back a bit. Moffat – what did he do?’
‘He tied my hands behind the tree, and pulled tightly, then another guy appeared. He said something, but I couldn’t understand it. Moffat had my head pulled back, and he had a knife. I saw it. I knew I was going to die. Then his head … disappeared. The other guy just sort of jerked slightly, and fell down.’
‘One bullet in the heart. Where did the shots come from?’
‘From the side somewhere.’
‘Silenced?’
Anderson struggled to remember. ‘I don’t know. Must have been. Not as loud as you’d expect.’
‘So, how did you get out?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said again, thinking of the ghostly figure flitting through the trees. ‘They cut me free. Somebody cut me free.’
‘Guardian angel, eh? Interesting.’ Batten didn’t seem surprised. ‘The point is, you walked – staggered – out of there relatively unharmed. Which might be exactly what was supposed to happen.’
3.00 A.M.
Anderson banged on the brass dolphin doorknocker that adorned Howlett’s front door. Batten had tried to talk him out of going, but he had eventually persuaded the psychologist to drive him out to Howlett’s house, threatening that he was going anyway, even if it was three in the morning, and it was up to Batten whether he went by car or taxi.
Anderson waited, his arm raised, ready to knock again, when he heard a slow shuffling and the door opened a fraction, caught by a chain.
‘Who’s there?’
‘DCI Anderson. Can I have a word, please?’
There was silence. Then, ‘Of course, Colin.’
Anderson heard a deep rasping breath, as though Howlett was having trouble breathing. Then the chain loosened and the door opened.
‘I guess I owe you.
‘I think you bloody do. An explanation, if nothing else. I was nearly killed out there.’
‘Come in, you are still shaky on your feet.’
‘I have Dr Batten in the car.’
Howlett shrugged a little, and his dressing gown slipped down his shoulders, as though it was too big for him. He peered out into the dark street, looking like a little old man. ‘Well, I did get him up here because I thought he would be of some use to you on this case, but not as a driver. Just leave him there, what I have to say will not take long.’ He retreated into his hall, then turned into a study. He switched on a side light and leaned on his desk, tired and weary.
Anderson’s anger abated.
‘You got him in on what case?’ asked Anderson, sitting in a side chair. His ribs still hurt and there was a squeezing sensation behind his eyeballs. ‘Because this is not a case where we need him to figure out a motive. We need to find out who is behind all this. And I think they know more about what we are doing than we do.’
Howlett looked at him, defeated. ‘And what else is on your mind?’
‘A young boy tortured and dropped off a bridge, a barbecued drug dealer, a young girl chained to a ladder and left to drown. Not to mention my ribcage staying as God intended.’
‘You’re still in shock. You shouldn’t be drinking but, if you’ll forgive me, I shall have a wee dram.’ Howlett poured himself a tumbler of whisky and water with laborious care and shuffled over to the armchair by the fireplace. He sat down opposite Anderson. He took a sip and leaned his head back, gazing up almost meditatively at Anderson. ‘What can I say? What drives men to have sex with a ten-year-old girl? Beat her? Brutalize her? Take pleasure in it?’ he asked thoughtfully. ‘Such men are extreme sexual sadists. And you are tracking down the kingpin of the organization, the man – or woman – who is happy to give these guys what they want. Kukolnyik. The Puppeteer. And you’re right, I don’t really have any real idea who he is. But you are doing the same job you have always done. The end result is the same. And our goal is the same. Anderson, you have kids. I have grandkids. I struggle to get my head round such behaviour, and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to get my head round it. That’s what Batten should be doing, not driving you around in the small hours. I don’t just want this bastard arrested and charged. I want him dead.’
‘But you just said that you don’t even know who he is.’
‘We know what he is. Have you noticed how organized everything is about the cases you are working on – how slick and well planned? How little evidence is left? This bastard has been pulling our strings since day one. Or a few bastards.’ He shook his head. ‘No, it is just one. It’s too tightly controlled to be more than one person. They seem to know how cops think. I thought Moffat might help get us there.’
‘He was a dirty cop and –’
‘Yes, I know, he’s been filthy for years. We let him run, hoping he’d lead us somewhere – and I used you as the lead chase dog.’
‘Without telling me?’
‘I didn’t want to prejudice your thinking. I just don’t know how to get ahead of the game any more.’ Howlett looked old and defeated, so defeated Anderson almost felt sorry for him. ‘I’m sorry about what happened tonight, Colin,’ he said. It sounded genuine, but he did not seem to be surprised by it.
Anderson leaned forward, and asked softly. ‘What I want to know is why LOCUST is not doing all this. Is this not what the bloody thing was set up for? They would have the resources, access to the intelligence.’
Howlett’s thin blue fingers seemed to grip the crystal tumbler a little harder, and his lips pursed a little tighter. ‘I’d appreciate it if this conversation went no further.’
‘Go on.’
‘Your old DCI, Alan McAlpine, and I were not so different. We were old school. You are too. I knew you’d bend the rules; I knew you’d go out and talk to Moffat on your o
wn. I owe you an apology, Colin. You were placed in danger this evening. Please believe that I did everything humanly possible to minimize any personal risk to you.’ Howlett paused to take another sip of whisky.
‘You set that up? I could have crashed my car, had my head blown off, had my throat cut. And for what?’
‘For every other girl who gets tied to a ladder and left for the tide to come in. I owe you a safe passage through this investigation, DCI Anderson, which is why I insisted that you and your team left precise details of your whereabouts on that board at all times. It is important – do you understand that?’ Howlett’s tone allowed no argument; only a slight creasing of the fine skin between his eyebrows betrayed any hint of discomfiture. ‘And as for LOCUST,’ he continued, ‘it doesn’t exist. It never has, and it never will.’
Anderson took a deep breath and sat back. ‘OK …’
But Howlett remained silent. That was all he was going to say.
‘So, what happened?’ Anderson demanded. ‘Did you run out of money or something?’
‘It was never supposed to exist. It was a smokescreen. We are at war, DCI Anderson, and in times of war you use intelligence, in every sense of the word, to combat intelligence. We have allowed the concept of LOCUST – an all-singing, all-dancing investigative team, multidisciplinary, across all specialities, with everything at their disposal – to become known. And our target, the Vorony, have no doubt been watching our every move, noting where LOCUST is being set up, who is being recruited, and working out who they can lean on, or eliminate. It’s the way they’ve always worked. Glasgow gangsters still live in their council estates, not in gated communities. They do not want to sit in Parliament or become part of society. They operate at their own level, as they always have. But the Russian mafia is entirely different: flash, totally unscrupulous and – worse – unpredictable. So, while their attention is diverted by LOCUST, we might have a chance to get ahead of the game.’
‘Positive misinformation.’
There was the hint of a smile. ‘Sometimes the old ways are the best. I don’t think for a moment they suspect a two-bit operation in a spare room in a lecture hall. Five of you – five – taking on all that, and reporting back to me and only me? I’ve been monitoring you and a few others, over the years, watching your careers. You are totally clean. You’ve never played golf with Eric Moffat or his kids. Niven MacKellar does. Do you see my dilemma? I’ve had my eye on a few DIs, and DCIs, over the years only to see them … compromise themselves. I can think of five DCIs who have come under the scrutiny of the Russian mafia. The one good DCI I had who I was sure they had not looked at was Colin Anderson. You were lucky enough to slip under their radar. That’s why I had to let Moffat get close to you. And I’m sorry I had to do it, but I would do the same thing again.’ Howlett gestured an apology with the flat of his hand.
‘What I want to know is how you knew Moffat was bent.’
‘But it doesn’t end with Moffat. We’ve learned that he is small fry.’
‘Answer the question, please,’ Anderson insisted.
Howlett sighed. ‘I was always a cop, but Moffat had been a soldier first. We had different ideas on policing. We never saw eye to eye, and differences of opinion hardened into animosity. But it meant I always noticed him. When you run your eye down a list of names, your friends jump out at you, but your enemies even more so. MacFadyean also joined the force from the army, and I always thought he and Moffat were a bit too buddy-buddy. Nothing specific, but it didn’t taste right. Back in the seventies there was a series of armed robberies in the city and there was apparently a report that one of the gunmen was holed up and living rough out on the Campsie Fells. Moffat was in charge of the search. A young officer called Jason Purcie was put right out on the flank, and he was shot through the head with a high-velocity rifle. It was given out at the time that the wanted criminal had killed him, but no trace of a gunman or any weapon was ever found. It was MacFadyean’s day off.’ Howlett’s tired old eyes gazed levelly at Anderson. ‘In this country, the police do not act as judge, jury and executioner.’
‘Is that what you think happened? Why?’
‘I have various thoughts on the matter, and on other incidents in Moffat’s career, but I’m hoping your current investigations will uncover the truth about many things. At first I assumed Moffat was empire-building on his own account. Then it became apparent that, in fact, he was merely a puppet – a pawn, a provider of tasty morsels of information. Recently, he’s had a chat with all five DCIs we had lined up for LOCUST, as if he was sounding them out … but for whom? About ten years ago, he went to Australia. But, even so, I could still discern his presence lurking in the shadows cast by events, as though the useful information was still being transmitted. Moffat has two sons in the force, you know, and he was always an efficient cop. He might live on the other side of the world but he would have grilled those two boys of his for all sorts of information, and they wouldn’t even realize. All they would think was that they were having a casual chat with their dad about work.’
‘They’re only at DS level. What could they know that would be of any use?’
‘Are you telling me your DS doesn’t know things she shouldn’t? If there’s one like that in each station, and someone can get all the chit-chat, all they need do is put it all together and examine the bigger picture. It’s not rocket science. But, like I said, I’ve come to understand that Moffat is rather further down the food chain than I had supposed. Never mind being a puppet master, he’s not even a puppet – well, maybe in the sense that he’s always had somebody’s hand jammed up his arse. But whose? I do not know – and that’s what we need to find out.’
Anderson thought for a few minutes. Then he said, ‘As I see it, you had a suspicion amounting to knowing that Moffat was transmitting information, but you had no proof that he was, because you didn’t know how he was doing it. Or exactly where it was going.’
‘Imagine him Down Under, gathering all kinds of info over the phone from his boys. But we know he was back here every three months, taking cops out for lunch, having a boys’ night out. He was the experienced one – they might have thought he was being helpful, giving advice, whereas in fact he was gaining info all the time. Then he put it into some kind of pattern and passed it on. Imagine, there could be a whole team of Moffats out there, getting information just from simple, casual one-to-one chats in a pub. We don’t know. But the conduit from there to the organization is what we need. We cannot find it, so we cannot break it. Saying, “Take out Melinda Biggart,” is one thing. The intelligence behind the speed and the execution of it is another. Moffat was only a link to the conduit, which is somebody in this city – the Puppeteer.’
‘Mick Batten would probably say it was somebody unassuming, somebody we’d just walk past on the street,’ said Anderson, frowning in thought. ‘Moffat was far too flashy, drew too much attention to himself.’
Howlett declined to respond. Instead, he said, ‘Colin, get your team, including DS Costello, to your room at ten thirty this morning. You ran her out to Glen Fruin, didn’t you?’
‘Last night, yes. Well, Wednesday night,’ he clarified. ‘She can’t drive at the moment, with her head injury.’
‘I know that. And you found the body of MacFadyean?’
‘We didn’t actually witness anything. We just stopped and found the body.’
‘And how did you know the body was there?’
‘We didn’t. We saw the crows.’
Their eyes met.
Howlett smiled sadly. ‘Crows, the most intelligent, most predatory of birds. Never forget that. And now, DCI Anderson, you had better go home and get some sleep.’
A few minutes later, Howlett stood at the window and watched the red tail lights of Batten’s car turn out of his gateway.
Then he lifted the phone.
‘Thanks for that,’ he said, without introducing himself. ‘And Anderson is well. Dr Batten is driving him home now. But there was so much
that could have gone wrong. Too much. We can’t take such risks again. Call on other people if you need them. But I want you and the team to keep close to DCI Anderson at all times. Keep him safe.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead as he listened. ‘Yes, I know, I know. Not long now. Less than forty-eight hours. This is the start of the end of days, the new beginning. Just remember that, Pettigrew. Just remember that.’
Howlett put the phone down, and it clicked on to the handset. He looked at his own hand, nothing but paper-thin skin and old bones.
The end of days.
7.30 A.M.
‘I thought you’d given up the evil weed,’ Anderson said, as Batten opened a packet of Marlboro Lights with the trembling fingers of the confirmed addict. Then he thought about his two hours’ sleep and reflected that his own might not be any steadier.
‘I stopped drinking a month back, and the number of fags doubled. So, I’m back on the booze as well. We’re OK to have a puff here, aren’t we?’ Batten perched himself on the wall and looked around furtively, as if the nicotine police were lying in wait for him.
‘Puff away all you like. The respiratory unit is just across the car park if you collapse.’ Anderson pulled loose the knot of his tie, and joined Batten on the wall. He opened the small brown paper bag he was carrying, and took out two black coffees and two bacon rolls.
‘Cheers, mate,’ Batten said, helping himself. ‘I spent what was left of the night with a few members of the Russian mafia and a paedophile called Cameron Fairbairn.’
‘Night on the files, was it?’ quipped Anderson, glad that somebody else was feeling the strain.
