by Caro Ramsay
‘How are you feeling?’
Anderson knew that the shock was going to hit him sometime, but at the moment he felt much better just not thinking about it. His brief sleep had been disturbed by repeated images of the second man jerking as the bullet struck him – something he had barely registered at the time – and the flashback was still haunting him.
‘Why didn’t Howlett call this meeting a bit earlier?’ Batten asked.
‘He wanted time to bring Costello back from her country estate.’ Anderson sipped at his coffee, watching a couple of women weave their way through the parked cars.
Batten swung both feet up on to the wall, and blew the smoke of his cigarette directly up at the sun. ‘Unlike Liverpool, you don’t have a real problem here with gun crime, do you?’
‘Not until recently. Up here, used to be that anybody who had a gun put in their hand was far too stupid to know how to use it properly. So, it always tended to be up close and personal, with a blade.’
‘Like being split up the middle, eh?’
‘You trying to put me off my bacon roll, Mick? No, that’s something we haven’t seen till now either.’
‘And what gangs do you have up here?’
‘You’ve read No Mean City? Well, that was ages ago. Those days are gone. And it wasn’t in this area. It was in the north and east – Protestant McGregors in the north, Catholic O’Donnells over to the east. Roughly,’ Anderson qualified the statement. ‘But they’re all dead now. Or safely locked up. One of them’s still in the Bar-L, for taking somebody’s head off with a machete.’
Batten raised an interrogatory eyebrow.
‘Wee Archie O’Donnell. Son of Auld Archie,’ Anderson explained. ‘The guy he decapitated was a junior lieutenant in his own gang; it was assumed to be retribution, because he’d stabbed a pregnant woman. One of the other lot. Killed her. Costello was on the scene and so was Moffat. God, I bet he was dirty even then. That’s why he sent Costello away – she was new to the force, and an unknown quantity to him.’
‘Was that some kind of jungle justice?’ Batten lay down along the wall, face up to the sun, his eyes closed.
‘And in case you’re going to go into your “the Krays loved their mother” routine, just remember it has always been believed that it was either the O’Donnells or the McGregors that took the wee Marchetti boy.’ Anderson pointed to The Works bookshop across the road. ‘There’s the book there, right in the front window. She thinks she came up with that theory, but she didn’t.’
‘That was never proved, though, was it?’ Batten said.
‘It’s what all the intelligence said at the time.’
‘Intelligence implicated both families – but not one or the other, definitively. You can’t have the same jam on two cakes, can you?’
Anderson sighed deeply. It was hot already, and he was very tired. Whatever they had drugged him with, the R2 was making his eyeballs hurt.
Batten sat up to light another cigarette, then lay back down again. ‘There is one thing that will stop a gang in its tracks,’ he said eventually.
‘AK-47? Sherman tank?’
‘Their own society. Gangs – well, Glasgow and Liverpool gangs – live by a code that is agreed, if you like. And dictated by the society they live in. Consent is given to a degree of lawbreaking, because it works for the good of that society. And consent is given to the hierarchical structure.’
‘Forced consent?’
‘Maybe. So, do you know anything about game theory?’
‘The only game theory we have is that in any draw Rangers get a penalty.’
‘Well, consider that. Consider Rangers and Celtic. They win everything, don’t they?’
‘More or less.’
‘So, if you owned, say … a rubbish team.’
‘Partick Thistle.’
‘OK, Partick Thistle. You would be daft to take them on. Your best bet to win anything is to set those two against each other in such a way that they weaken each other, allowing you to take on the winner. The winner will inevitably be inferior to the original, giving you a good chance of success.’
‘Where does this come into anything?’
‘Substitute the MacGregors and the O’Donnells. Families that had ruled Glasgow for a hundred years or so with extreme familial, geographical and religious loyalty.’
‘Loyalties run as deep as the Molendinar in this city.’
‘The what?’ asked Batten.
‘The river that runs underneath Glasgow, right underneath.’
‘And such loyalty, running deep, means a lot in a city like this. That’s why the Marchetti kidnap caused so much mayhem. Drugs, porn, counterfeiting – that’s all allowed. The senseless killing of a six-year-old is certainly not. The Marchetti thing was a can of worms that exploded. They were informing all over the place, on their own people as well as each other. More grasses than B&Q’s seed catalogue. Previous loyalties were shattered. It was the end for them.’
Anderson just grunted, and shifted his rapidly numbing backside on the wall.
‘The question is how much Howlett knows about it. You’ve seen him – the whites of his eyes are yellow, his jacket’s swimming on him, and his belt’s in a new hole. The man is not well. He wants this situation closed before he retires – if he lasts that long. I’m as sure as I can be that this is the last stand of a dying man with nothing to lose. As for this Puppeteer?’ Batten stubbed his cigarette out. ‘It might take one to know one.’
10.30 A.M.
Deliberately or not, Wyngate had arranged the seating in the lecture hall so that no one sat at the head of the long table, and the ACC – who was out of uniform – was simply one person sitting among his peers. Anderson, Batten, O’Hare, Lambie and Mulholland were already present, and there were two empty seats. The room was seething with tension but Anderson couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He hoped Howlett had something up his sleeve to pull the team together.
The door opened and Costello walked in, holding the door open for another woman, diminutive and slightly built, who looked like a typical student in jeans and T-shirt, her jacket tied round her waist and a knitted handbag slung across her shoulder. It was obvious from the banality of the conversation that they had just met. Costello looked pale and tired, but behind her eyes Anderson saw the old familiar spark, and thought she looked more alive than he had seen her in ages. His thoughts were confirmed by the way she banged the chair back before sitting down. Keen to get on with it, then. He was glad she was back. She wouldn’t let Howlett get away with anything.
The smaller woman pulled out the other seat. ‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m Matilda McQueen.’ She opened her bag and took out a file, pulled the cap off her pen with her teeth and sat down, ready, totally confident, totally at ease.
‘She is our forensic science expert, and the Prof here is our forensic medical expert. They are both very much part of this team,’ said Howlett.
‘Whether they like it or not,’ said Anderson, which raised a smile and broke the tension.
Wyngate closed the door, then checked it was securely locked before taking his own seat.
‘I’m not going to talk.’ ACC Howlett stood up. ‘I just want you to sit and watch something. It was bought in a pub toilet for three hundred pounds and handed to us. I’ll show you the edited highlights only.’ His eyes darted from Costello to McQueen, obviously slightly uncomfortable with the thought that women were present. He pressed Play on the remote control for the laptop that was linked to the PowerPoint projector. The screen went dark, and a few coded numbers and letters flashed across. The sound preceded the visuals by a few seconds, a primal scream of sheer terror, and Costello recoiled nervously. Then a girl’s face came into view, her eyes screwed shut, her mouth open, screaming. Two rough hairy hands were holding her down. The screaming stopped, and words spilled out among the girl’s sobs.
‘What’s she saying? That’s not English, is it?’ Wyngate asked.
‘She’s
screaming for her mother, in Russian,’ said Vik, without taking his eyes off the screen.
Anderson leapt to his feet, and his chair crashed over backwards. ‘Christ, I’m not watching this!’ he snarled. ‘No way! Open that fucking door!’
Howlett nodded briefly to Wyngate, who jumped up faster than anybody had ever seen him move, key at the ready. Anderson stormed out, banging the door behind him.
No one uttered a word, or looked at anyone else. Wyngate righted the fallen chair on his way back to his place at the table.
On screen, a pillow came down on the girl’s face and stayed there.
Howlett picked up the remote and the screen returned to royal blue. Matilda was in tears, and Costello sat with her arms folded, looking furious.
‘That was by way of showing you why we are here,’ Howlett said. ‘I thought I would spare us the previous twenty-seven minutes. And what came after. The girl wasn’t dead, just unconscious. She was revived from that, to go through it again and again. There are two men involved.
Matilda shuddered.
‘This man with the bracelet tattoo, and a second with a “Rangers No Surrender” tattoo.’
‘Well, that cuts it down to half the blokes in Glasgow,’ said Mulholland with thin sarcasm.
‘Tattoos may be of the same pattern, but they are all unique. You know that,’ Howlett answered. ‘That is a start, and we need every –’
He was interrupted by Matilda blowing her nose loudly. Batten put his hand out and patted hers automatically, then went back to scribbling away in his notebook.
‘Do we know who she is?’ asked Costello.
‘No. But we call her Rusalka,’ explained Mulholland. ‘It’s the name of the water sprite in Dvořák’s opera.’
‘Dies in the end, does she?’ Costello grunted. ‘What age was she, do we think?’
O’Hare replied, ‘I reckon about ten. There are two other girls. One found in Argyll and one up near Tain.’
‘Their full PM results showed similar injuries to Rusalka’s, so we conclude, tentatively, that they suffered the same fate,’ said O’Hare.
Matilda stood up unsteadily, her face white. ‘Sorry, I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said, and fled.
‘Do you want to go and make sure she’s OK?’ Howlett asked Costello.
‘Not particularly,’ said Costello.
Howlett took off his glasses and polished them, before putting them back on, and coughing gently to retrieve everybody’s attention. ‘I have something very important to tell you. But first I should say that I don’t want any of this to leave this room. I know, and have known for a long time, that you are a close-knit unit. I doubt that there is any possibility of this unit being compromised.’
‘No leaks, you mean?’ Costello snapped.
‘Indeed, that’s why I took you all out of Partick – I needed to isolate you, to get you out on your own.’
‘And what exactly are we working on?’ Costello asked. ‘I’m presuming we are all working on the same thing?’
‘You are,’ Howlett said. He picked up a file from the floor beside him, and pulled out a piece of white card, Wyngate’s scale drawing of the floor plan of flats G1 and G2 at the Apollo. ‘This is the unoccupied flat next to the one that burned. Now, Miss McQueen’s report shows that the marks pointed out to us by DCI Anderson on the ceiling and the walls were bore holes that match where the lights had to be in relation to the object being filmed. The camera was hand held, as you saw, but the lights were steady. So, between Anderson and Matilda, we have independent, corroborative evidence.’ Howlett took a deep breath. ‘The samples from the towels Anderson sent to the lab mean we can now place Rusalka in that room. Matilda got enough DNA to get a positive match. Analysis of the child’s hair indicates that she had been drugged regularly, over time. But the important thing for now is that Biggart has been stopped.’
‘By the Bridge Boy?’ It was Mulholland who asked. ‘An arsonist as a hit man? That’s novel!’
‘But it would be nice to know why he was subsequently tortured, and by whom.’
‘But we don’t know who he is,’ remarked Costello, with slight sarcasm.
Lambie said. ‘I think we might get the answer to that later today. We have some information from –’
‘Good,’ said Howlett, not letting Lambie say any more. ‘DS Wyngate, you can go and find DCI Anderson, and tell him he can come back in now.’ Howlett turned to O’Hare. ‘Jack? Have you anything else for us?’
‘I have indeed.’ O’Hare placed a post mortem photograph on the table. It showed the total disintegration of a head struck by a high-velocity bullet. He put down another photograph, of the skin crease of an elbow with three wavy lines tattooed on the skin above and a delicate band of barbed wire round the wrist. The prints were so fresh they still smelled of developing fluids.
Anderson and Wyngate came back into the room and sat down. Anderson reached for both prints and studied them wordlessly.
‘That tattoo on the wrist matches, exactly, the one on the passenger in the white van,’ said Howlett. ‘And also the tattoo on the wrist of the man whose arms we saw in the film just now. Among the fingerprints lifted from the flat are some that match a set on file under the name Alexei Grusov, among many other aliases. A further distinguishing feature is white scarring on the iris of his right eye, the result of an old stab wound.’
Anderson looked up. ‘Somebody mentioned that.’
‘Janet did,’ said Mulholland. ‘So this man Grusov – the man in the van – was the man shot with Moffat. And he was a visitor to Biggart’s flat.’
‘It certainly seems so,’ Howlett agreed. None of this seemed to be news to him. ‘He was known on the street as Perky. I don’t imagine his death will be regretted by many.’
‘Perky? Why?’
‘Because they work in pairs. The other Russian has the street name Pinky, due to the loss of the small digit on his left hand. But these are no cute wee piglet puppets. Both are trained pilots, ex-military. And they are well versed in torture, and survival techniques. Russian survival techniques usually involve killing the other bloke. Pinky is the more violent of the two.’
‘Do we have any idea where Pinky is?’ asked Anderson.
‘Gone to ground.’
‘And do we know who shot Moffat and Perky?’
Howlett appeared not to have heard Anderson’s question.
‘Whoever he was, he was a crack shot,’ said Batten soothingly. ‘What about the Bridge Boy’s ID?’
Anderson noticed how Batten had steered the conversation away from his question, replacing it with another for which there was an immediate answer.
Howlett said, ‘DCI Anderson, I’d like you to go and talk to a Dr Gaynor Spence, and confirm that she’s the Bridge Boy’s mother. Her neighbour saw the mock-up photo and called her. She was abroad at some conference and is flying back this morning. She didn’t know he was missing. Go as soon as we’re through here.’
‘Is there anything I’m actually allowed to tell her?’ Anderson asked.
‘Just be circumspect,’ Howlett warned. ‘However, we’re pretty certain one of the men who tried to kill her son is dead. You can tell her that, at least.’
Anderson nodded. ‘But even though Biggart’s gone, and Grusov has gone, the Puppeteer is still alive and kicking, right?’
‘And not known to us. But he controls everything, and we need to identify him. Looking at any terrorism intelligence, the one fact that arouses suspicion is a lack of mobile phone communication. It’s so easy to trace – anybody involved in serious activity avoids them. Hence the reason why we have looked at areas with no mobile phone signal.’
‘Such as the glen?’ said Costello.
‘And when there, Wullie MacFadyean just falls into our laps,’ Anderson said. ‘Has Christmas come early?’
‘And he was at Carruthers’ funeral, and so was Moffat. You are the watching brief in the glen, Costello.’ Howlett paused and looked round at them all. E
ven shrunken and ill, he dominated the gathering. ‘There is no chatter on the ether, no texting, no emailing for the intelligence boys to trace, nothing to track. So, how does this gang communicate? Because they do – this is a well-tuned organization. But how are they doing it? Until we know that, we can’t stop it. We need to ID the Puppeteer and take him out the picture. That is our job.’
As Howlett dismissed them, he gently put his arm out to stop Costello and said in a low tone, ‘I repeat, you are the watching brief in the glen. Are you OK with that?’
She nodded.
‘Well, I want you to know you can always trust Pettigrew.’ Howlett looked at his feet. ‘Good man, Pettigrew. Keep in touch with him.’ He gave her a tight little smile and walked out of the room as Wyngate held the door open for him.
Costello looked round. ‘Excuse me, Mick, can I have a word with you? About a boy called Andrew Elphinstone? I think he might be dangerous.’
‘Just give me a minute. I need a fag after that.’ Batten pushed his chair back.
Costello noticed his hand shaking. ‘If not something stronger.’ She smiled and watched him go, then turned to Anderson. ‘Do you trust Howlett?’ she asked, whispering in Anderson’s ear once Batten was out of the door. ‘Because I’m bloody sure that he knows exactly who the Bridge Boy is.’
‘Why does that not surprise me?’ Anderson raised an eyebrow at Costello. ‘I overheard that wee conversation. So, Pettigrew is one of us?’
‘Depends what you mean by “us”,’ Costello replied.
12.30 P.M.
Matilda slid into the seat beside DCI Anderson, giving him a concerned little smile. ‘How did it go?’
‘The moment Gaynor saw the boy lying there, she collapsed against the glass and sobbed her eyes out. So, we’ll take that as a positive ID, and we’ll request some DNA samples for you.’
‘So, she didn’t know her son was missing?’
‘No, she was in Geneva and flew back first thing in the morning.’ Anderson showed her the photograph of a handsome young man, with dark eyes and a smile that could melt an iceberg. ‘Mum is a GP in Milngavie. She has a son – Richard, known as Richie – now nineteen years old. He was doing the gap year thing; working at a care home while Mum paid for his flat in the West End.’
