Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘Don’t I fuckin’ know it, but it’s done now. What do you think of the show so far?’

  Drew sipped from his glass and savoured the whack of spice and slow heat in his mouth. ‘The odds are that you’re fucked, and if I had any sense I’d tell you to write up your will and pick the hymns. However, I’m gettin’ too old for stick-ups and need to work. I’ll help you out, but there’s something I need in return, my friend. Quid pro quo.’

  Eddie nodded slowly and realised he was a bit more than slightly pissed. He’d expended too much nervous energy for one day and needed the release. ‘Name it, Billy.’

  ‘I’ve got scores to settle, but unlike you I don’t have a team and a pocket full of bent bastards all over the shop. I always tended to work on my own or with my mate, Colin Jack – until I made the mistake of taking my idiot brother on-board. Anyway, Colin’s inside for a stabbing at the moment and my brother has fucked off because he gobbed to the cops so if he shows his face here I’ll take it off.’

  Eddie focused on the wall clock, then realised it was 4 a.m. and they were still necking goldies.

  ‘You know the story with my brief Jonathon Barclay? Was my lawyer for years. Top of his profession and turns out he’s Mick Harkins’ number-one grass. I get life, but when it all comes out I walk on appeal. But . . .’ He leaned forward just to make sure Eddie got it, ‘I don’t forgive and forget.’ He sat back in his chair and nodded to emphasise the statement.

  Eddie knew the whole story already. Everyone in Scotland did, but Billy wanted to tell it again and it was better to let him get it out. With his mate and brother he’d invaded the home of a wealthy Chinese couple in Glasgow to rob them. It had gone badly wrong and they’d tortured and killed the businessman and his wife for nothing. His brother had made enough mistakes to lead the police to them and the jury had no problem bringing in guilty verdicts. The old judge had happily given Billy and co lifers, but luck came his way when his lawyer was exposed as a police informant who had given information about the Drews.

  ‘Help me find Barclay. He must call his wife. Do you have anyone inside the phone companies who can get her call records?’

  ‘No problem. Anything else?’

  ‘After Barclay I want Mick Harkins, and I might need help to make sure he’s in the right place at the right time. It should be easy enough – the bastard’s lost his mojo since Barclay’s boy rearranged his skeleton with the front end of his car.’

  Eddie nearly dropped his glass.

  ‘A cop! Mick Harkins?’

  ‘No, Eddie. An ex-cop and pisshead.’

  ‘Are you sure? Mick Harkins is no clown, and the force won’t take that one sitting on their arse.’

  ‘That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.’

  Eddie pictured the UC getting treated with the hammer and he still couldn’t get rid of the image of Brenda McMartin grinning as she’d lit his cigarette. It had felt like the condemned man having his last fag in front of the firing squad. He threw back the rest of the whisky.

  ‘Fuck it. You have a deal, but I need some shut-eye. I’ll meet you later in the day if that suits you.’ He stood up unsteadily as Drew raised his glass. ‘Here’s to business, and first is Ricky the grass. No way do we let those fuckin’ radges from the west clean up the mess. Fuck that.’

  7

  At the same time as Eddie Fleming was collapsing into his bed, Ricky Swan was waking up to the music of BBC News on the telly and his spoodle licking his face. He was still fully dressed, head pounding and he realised – as he did almost every morning – that he should have given the last couple of vodkas a miss. His stomach burned with the previous night’s overindulgence plus years of similar experience. He’d fallen asleep in his favourite chair only a couple of hours after breaking in one of the new girls from his sauna. Swan had sent her on her way when he was done, and like the tight bastard he was he’d let her pay for the taxi back to her flat. It always gave him a real belly laugh when he saw the look of disappointment on a girl’s face when she was punted out onto the street in the middle of the night.

  He stood up wearily then stretched to his full height of five six. As he yawned noisily his top set of dentures dropped from the roof of his mouth, but he was used to this and left them resting on his bottom teeth till the yawn was complete. He bit the dental plate back into place as he stepped forward to look in the mirror above the Adam fireplace and realised his comb-over was hanging down the side of his head like a decomposed rodent. He trained the strands back into place and admired his reflection. The fact that he used the services of his girls on a regular basis made him believe that he was attractive and had the X Factor in buckets. The small matter that they had little or no choice had never occurred to him.

  It was hardly more than a full day since the events at Eyemouth, and the limited press release hadn’t quite hit the spot with the public or the news hounds. One reporter, however, had got wind through her police contacts that a major story was brewing and she’d started to harass her best sources. Her name was Jacquie Bell and she’d been a friend of Grace Macallan’s since soon after the latter had arrived in Edinburgh. Bell was a relentless investigative journalist, mostly disliked by the police, but only because she did her job so well and regardless of whether it hurt them or not. Although Bell had realised that what was emerging was a major story, she was keeping it under wraps till she’d exhausted all her sources inside Police Scotland. But the police were struggling to make sense of what they knew, and until the girl found on the Berwickshire coast could tell them something, they were toiling to get a major investigation underway. What they did have, though, was a lifebelt with the name Brighter Dawn written in big fuck-off red letters, which had been lying next to the girl when she was discovered. This was the clue that had sent the chief into a tailspin. It was the same boat that had been boarded in Eyemouth. The poisoned icing on the cake was that the men who’d been detained in Eyemouth had been released without charge hours before the girl was found. It was a wet dream in the making for the journalists, who loved writing up the constabulary as a bunch of incompetents running around like the extras in an old Benny Hill sketch. Bell was closing in on the problem for the force and she’d also picked up a snippet that a covert officer was missing. She didn’t know whether there was a connection but she was pressing all the right buttons to find out if there was. She left Macallan off her call list though. She would still be changing nappies in Northern Ireland and Bell thought too much of her to intrude, especially given how badly she’d been hurt by the events of the bombing in Edinburgh.

  Ricky Swan had been so preoccupied with showing his latest recruit what she could expect as one of his employees that he’d missed the breaking news about the ‘girl from the sea’ as the press had already dubbed her. It probably wouldn’t have caused him too much concern, as none of the girls on the boat had been destined for his particular establishment – at least not this time. The only thing that Swan worried about was what kept him happy and his little luxuries, as he liked to call his almost nightly sessions with the staff. What would have raised his blood pressure to dangerous levels, had he known, was that the police were making every effort to contact a missing undercover officer, and the fuck-up at Eyemouth raised the possibility that he’d been exposed.

  Swan decided he’d have another couple of hours’ kip, though he felt wide awake. His working day never started till mid-afternoon at the earliest so there was no pressure. He slipped out of his clothes and donned his favourite pair of lairy jim-jams before diving under the black silk sheets on the king-size. He switched the telly back on and flicked through to the news channel, which was unusual for him but at that time of the morning there wasn’t much else to choose from, and he’d had enough porn to keep him going for the next twenty-four hours. The news was nearly all depressing: the Middle East simmered and the city fat cats just kept swelling. He was feeling for the remote to try to locate some Kyle or Springer reruns when the piece came on about the ‘girl from
the sea’. He left the remote where it was and followed the report without getting too excited. There wasn’t much detail from the ‘on-the-spot’ hack, who looked miserable on the damp beach and wasn’t in a position to say more than the few details that the police had already released. What he did mention, however, was the fact that a police operation had taken place in the early hours, which prompted a very distant bell to start clanging in Swan’s noddle. He knew that the team the Flemings were involved with imported their commodities by boat and so it might be that his cooperation with the forces of law and order had brought in the bacon. ‘Nice one, Ricky my boy.’ He muttered it with a smile, knowing that as a top informant any result meant brownie points for him, and he needed them in case the police decided to change their minds again about their policy on saunas. Since the formation of Police Scotland and the old Strathclyde takeover of the country’s moral compass, Edinburgh’s previously enlightened stance on Swan’s type of establishment was taking a kicking.

  Life in recent years had been good to Swan, and as far as he was concerned he deserved the rewards that running prostitutes and a string of saunas had brought him. In his youth he’d left school with few or no prospects and all anyone could remember about him was that he was the creepy runt who used to stare at the girls in the playground. He filled a few dead-end jobs and spent some lonely hours with his favourite porn magazines or, when he could save enough, spent an hour with the cheapest girl he could find on the street. As sometimes happens, however, a life that was destined for obscurity took one of those turns that can happen as easily to the undeserving as to the commendable.

  An old aunt, who’d spent more time bringing him up than his parents had, went to her maker and left all she had to him, her only living relative. To his absolute surprise and pleasure his aunt had been careful with her money and had saved what her late husband had left her after a childless but happy marriage. She had no idea about investments but had started to dabble when Maggie Thatcher wanted everyone to worship the religion of greed. Nevertheless, she remained canny, was good at it and reaped the rewards. In fact she spent nothing of the profits on herself, just enjoying the game, and as far as everyone who knew her was concerned she was a nice old lady who just managed to scrape by on her pension. When she made her will she pondered leaving it to good causes, but her sense of duty to her family swayed her into giving it to her nephew. She prayed to the god she’d served faithfully that the money might provide Ricky with a better life than the one he would undoubtedly have had otherwise.

  Once Swan had settled down after the shock of this legacy, he knew straightaway where his future lay. He’d spent long lonely hours imagining himself with a string of girls who would do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and he dived into the business with relish. He was successful because he knew from his own regular fantasies exactly what the punters wanted. The business expanded, and with it came the discovery that his product attracted all comers, sometimes including the great and good of Scotland’s capital city. At the end of the day the customers’ fear of exposure was overcome by their desire to take risks with women who made them feel special and weren’t shocked by their varying demands. People who would have sneered at Swan in his old life wanted to know him because he held the keys to the product, and they foolishly believed that their friendship bought them a degree of trust with him. They couldn’t have been more wrong, and he’d soon realised their weakness had huge value. He’d installed state-of-the-art recording systems in the booths and over the years compiled enough material to bring down, if he chose, some of the very best people from politics, law, entertainment and, of course, the capital’s top criminals, who liked the type of women he could provide. The odd cop would turn up supposedly in the course of their job, but there were always one or two who just couldn’t resist the offer of a freebie. He welcomed them with open arms and knew the power of having friends in the local station. They were all in his XXX collection.

  Nobody actually liked Swan but they put on matey smiles and flattered him because they all believed he wielded power – which he did, through his knowledge of who the clients really were – not the public faces or the doting husbands but the heaving, grunting customers who actually believed the working girls cared about them. They would bare their souls to those women, who hardly understood English, but the audio mics picked up every revelation. Unfortunately for Swan, this meant he’d started to believe he was fireproof, safe from the hazards facing most of the people he knew.

  There were only two things in life that Swan really cared about apart from the fringe benefits of his business. The first and most important of these was his daughter, Christine, who was the result of the one relationship that had come close to having any meaning in his life. Her mother had cleared off years before and he’d lost touch with her, which suited him just fine these days. Christine Swan, now grown up, had moved to Dundee to study at the college of art and put distance between herself and his grubby business. He paid her bills and in return she tolerated speaking to him on the phone every couple of weeks. She was happy enough and determined to build a life where she could forget where she came from. Twice a year she would meet him for lunch where they would sit, try to communicate with each other and fail every time. Fortunately, she’d inherited her mother’s good looks and very little from her father. Swan really wanted her to have a good life that meant something, and she was the only human being who stirred these emotions in him. He understood her lack of affection, but he was proud of her and what she was becoming. When he was in his cups he’d brag to the escorts about his brilliant daughter, who was destined to become a great artist, even though they were completely uninterested in anything he had to say. The walls of his bedroom were covered with the early drawings and watercolours that had shown such promise. Christine was everything he’d failed to be, and he often worried how he’d cope when a man finally walked into her life. How could she bring someone home to meet the parents when all she had in her family was Ricky the pimp?

  His other indulgence away from his business was line dancing – in fact anything to do with the American West. Even when he was on his own at home he would wear his favourite cowboy hat that he’d bought on a holiday to the States. This obsession had even gone as far as naming his house ‘The Corral’, much to the disdain of his neighbours in one of the best parts of town. His home was in the Ravelston area, only a mile from the city centre. A place in those beautiful tree-lined streets meant you’d arrived. Art galleries, parks and the Water of Leith were the backdrop to beautifully designed homes for some of the city’s very best people. These same residents were the pillars of society and having a pimp in their midst who lived somewhere called The Corral was a never-ending subject of local conversation, particularly among the ladies of the house. The irony was that at least two of the husbands were regulars at one of his saunas and, in one case, even Swan thought the punter had bizarre tastes. Those well-respected men tended to say very little when their wives complained about the problem of having a man like Swan contaminating the area.

  But the man who’d been the runt at school had started to enjoy playing games and dropping some serious villains in the shit. There were sharp detectives around who saw his vanity for what it was and how it could be exploited. Over a few drinks with these same detectives, he loved to blow about the people he knew – and without realising it he ended up as a CHIS.

  DS Mick Harkins had picked up the signals that some of his second-division colleagues had been using the sauna girls and that Swan thought this made him fireproof. Harkins had then played him to perfection, and when he’d explained to Swan that he had become a fully fledged police source it had come as quite the surprise. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d been grassing up some of the nastiest criminals in the city and what this meant in the real world. The detective had explained there was no going back and that he either played for Harkins or was fed to the associates of the men doing time because of Swan’s excellent but ill-judged rel
ationship with the local constabulary.

  ‘You’re too fuckin’ late pal. You’ve already helped put two horrible bastards in Saughton. Or did I imagine that?’ Harkins had said it with a smile that confirmed he owned Swan lock, stock and barrel.

  It was only then that Swan had realised Harkins had never taken anything from him. He was so used to having the goods on other people that he hadn’t noticed Harkins revolve the table 360 degrees. In time, he quite enjoyed the role of top grass and liked the feeling that he could help put away punters who in any other arena would eat him for breakfast. It was payback for the type of people who’d shoved him around in his undistinguished youth.

  After Harkins was nearly killed by Thomas Barclay and pensioned off, control of Swan had moved over to the Source Unit, who handled all informants for Police Scotland. He got on well enough with the official handlers, but he didn’t like the fact that these modern cops were straight pegs and did it all by the book. Harkins hadn’t given a rat’s arse about the rule book and handled people his way, which was part of the reason that Billy Drew had walked from what should have been a solid murder conviction. Honesty was something that Swan had problems dealing with and he preferred not to have it in his life. He had no leverage with his handlers, which pissed him off at times, but he could live with it. In any case, he always reassured himself that he had his time bomb for a rainy day: the sauna DVDs were safely hidden and no one had seen them, or even knew about them, apart from himself and his spoodle, Gnasher, who wasn’t a problem.

  When the handlers had asked Swan to introduce someone to the Flemings in order to get to Pete Handyside, he’d been a bit uneasy, but the thought that it might be something tasty had given him a bit of a buzz so he’d gone for it big time. He’d worked out that it was an undercover job and he imagined himself in that role, risking his life and taking on the hard men. He knew Handyside by reputation and had done a bit of business with him through the Flemings, who were trading in working girls. They had a thing going where the girls would work part-time in Newcastle, Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh, keeping on the move so the law couldn’t get a steady aim on them. Handyside had always been polite and businesslike as far as he knew, but the man’s reputation troubled Swan. He’d heard what he was capable of, and while he knew that a lot of reputations in the criminal world were built partly on myth, he had the feeling that was not the case with Handyside. As such Swan was sure it was better not to meet the man personally or have any business problems with him – he was happy to leave that to the Flemings.