When the Devil Drives

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ he said, and she saw a little glint of humour in his smile, amused by their mutual awareness of who was at the wheel.

  It made her think of the Reverend Tormod McDonald again, and of Julian Sanquhar. Both men were disturbed by the belief that Satan was more than just a name we gave to the worst in ourselves.

  ‘Sanquhar gave this interview to the Sunday Times a few years back,’ she told Fallan. ‘He said: “You go and ask the soldiers who were in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Rwanda. They’ll tell you there are evils in this world greater than man.” I’m guessing you’ve seen some very bad things in your time, and done some truly dark deeds. Do you believe there’s something outside of man that can make him worse than he would otherwise be?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fallan replied. ‘Drink.’

  ‘I’m being serious here.’

  ‘So am I. Entirely. But if you want to know about Satan, let me tell you a wee story. Guy I knew, back in very bad times, name of Malky. Bad, bad bastard. A brutal reputation even among men for whom violence was a way of life. He’d been in the game a long time before I met him, by which point he’d become a born-again Christian. It was an AA thing: he’d been on the programme and he was very committed to everything he did. Never did anything by half, so if he was going on the wagon he was riding it all the way. Anyway, the twelve steps were kind of a gateway drug to Christianity, and he took that very seriously too. Everything stopped for church.’

  Fallan dropped a gear and accelerated. He was taking advantage of a break in the oncoming traffic to overtake a tractor, but it turned left into a field as he did so, through a gap in the hedge that had been invisible upon their approach.

  ‘Malky worked for Tony McGill, remember him?’

  ‘The self-styled old-school gangster?’

  ‘That’s the one. Some chancer had ripped Tony off on a deal, something to do with smuggled cigarettes. The guy was seriously taking the piss and wasn’t listening to reason, shall we say. Malky had been Tony’s man on the deal, so I remember Tony asking Malky what he was going to do about it. Malky’s response was these exact words:

  ‘“Tomorrow’s Sunday, so I’m going to church to pray to the Lord that He’ll make this guy see the error of his ways and do what’s right. Then, if that doesn’t work, first thing Monday morning it’s balaclavas and a van.”’

  Jasmine covered her mouth, though she wasn’t sure whether she was trying more to stifle her shock or her laughter. From Fallan’s expression, she could tell the story had ultimately ended with plan B.

  ‘The point is, religion doesn’t change what’s inside. People just use it to make sense of what’s already there. I think Tormod is scared – scared now as he was scared then – and this is how he convinces himself that it’s all right to be afraid, because he was dealing with something that was too big for him to fight.’

  Instruments of Darkness

  Tormod had never known such torment.

  He had known pain. He had known shame. He had known guilt, anguish and fear. He had no inkling they could all assail him at once, each one multiplied to the power of the last until he was tossed in the tempest of his own silent screams.

  Never in his life had he more sincerely wished he could turn back the hands of time. Never had its flow seemed so irreversible, events marking him with a stain that could not be cleansed. Never had he felt so wretched, so condemned. This was something far worse than fear, because fear was a mere part of it. This was true horror, that only a damned few would ever know.

  There were beliefs he had been brought up with from infancy, cautionary teachings handed down by his father that he had dutifully acknowledged, but only tonight did he realise that, until now, he had never really had faith in them. He had merely professed to believe in them, as was expected of him as a good son. Like the stories of the Old Testament and even some of the New, these stories of ancient evil, of demons, of Satan, were remote and fantastical, unrelated to the world he had grown up to understand.

  He didn’t truly believe in them because he didn’t think he was expected to truly believe in them. He didn’t even think his father truly believed in them. They were statements to be affirmed as a matter of identity; myths to be considered on a metaphorical level. They were not something you ever expected to encounter. Not something you ever expected to feel.

  But now he had truly felt, and now he truly believed.

  He had suffered possession, and now that it was over he understood that the possession itself was not the worst of it: merely the beginning.

  What had passed before had been mere madness. He had endured the helplessness of watching in a state of delirium, confusion and fear as something else made a vessel of his body and he became a mere passenger.

  He had felt desires that were not his. He had watched himself carry out deeds that were not the will of his own mind.

  Then the devil’s true cruelty was revealed as it passed from him once more.

  It had left him, but when the scales fell he saw that the world was forever altered, and he was doomed to live in it.

  The house felt different. He wandered through its corridors like a wraith, seeing agonised faces wherever he looked: every painting on the walls was staring at him in condemnation, every potted plant morphed into a chimera. He saw this place for what it was, and understood that the evil that had taken him was still here. He could feel it all around: it had passed from him but it had not departed and, worst of all, he knew it would seek out others.

  Too late he ran to find Mhairi: sweet, innocent Mhairi.

  He discovered her naked in the arms of a man. She was already in its grip, no longer herself. She was scornful of his words: wanton, cruel, flaunting not just her body but her lust.

  His failure was complete, his anguish absolute. He didn’t think anything could bring him lower. Then he heard chanting, and saw the flicker of candlelight spilling from an open door.

  That was when he learned that it had not been he who summoned this evil; learned that he simply couldn’t have. It took more than mere thoughts, mere will. It took what he saw beyond that door.

  The ritual. The altar. The knife.

  The sacrifice.

  Saturnalia

  They made it to Logie-Almond Academy a little before six o’clock. As Fallan drove slowly through the grounds they passed groups of pupils in their uniforms making their way from their dormitories along the paths and pavements towards the indoor sports hall.

  ‘Will he still be around?’ Fallan asked.

  ‘Their term runs a week later than the local prole schools, and as it’s a boarding school, the show isn’t over when the bell rings at four.’

  The last time she was here, Jasmine had spotted a notice in the reception area advertising office opening times of nine until six, as well as a phone number for out-of-hours inquiries. As it looked like there was something going on this evening, she was confident Weir would still be present.

  Unfortunately, so was his secretary. New visitors are seldom a welcome sight when they show up five minutes before you’re planning to close for the day, so it was with considerable relish that this torn-faced woman came off the phone to her boss and informed Jasmine that ‘Mr Weir isn’t available to speak to you.’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ she said.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. Mr Weir has instructed me to inform you that he has extended his cooperation already on this matter and now wishes to be left in peace. We are about to close the office for the day, so I must ask you to leave the premises, and I am obliged to inform you that you are not at liberty to return. This is not only private property, but it is a school, and we have obligations to our pupils and their parents that …’

  She wittered on for another few seconds, trotting out more official policy and milking the moment. Jasmine had stopped listening back at ‘Mr Weir has instructed me’. She waited patiently for the woman to finish.

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said, offering a breezily polite
smile, no hard feelings. ‘I understand. I do have a very important message for Mr Weir, but I’m happy for you to pass it on as long as you do so right now. Then we’re out of here, okey-doke?’

  Jasmine scribbled the words and numbers down on a piece of paper. The secretary put it to one side, then picked it up again when Jasmine made it clear she wasn’t leaving until it had been relayed to its intended recipient.

  The secretary picked up the phone and pushed a button.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry to disturb you again, Mr Weir. I’ve been asked to pass on the following message. It looks like some sort of code, but I’m assured you’ll understand what it means. It says simply: “Mhairi McDonald, Balnavon, five, eleven, sixty-six. Eighty-one minus sixty-six equals fifteen.”’

  It was not so much a code as a password, and it gained them full access about ten seconds later.

  ‘You don’t know Mhairi McDonald’s date of birth,’ Fallan said under his breath as they were escorted to the headmaster’s office.

  ‘Neither does Weir.’

  Weir’s office was bigger than Jasmine’s whole flat, and its furniture was probably worth more. Leather-bound volumes lined the shelves of towering bookcases either side of a fireplace she could have driven her old Civic through. It certainly vindicated her previous strategy of speaking to him away from his power centre. Under most circumstances, this kind of environment would have provided a quite formidable home advantage to the host, but it wasn’t going to do him much good today. When you’re a boarding-school headmaster staring down the barrel of an underage sex accusation, you can’t really get much further on to the back foot. Furthermore, home advantage or power centre, nobody could be said to be in their comfort zone when Glen Fallan was sitting opposite.

  ‘None of it was what you think,’ Weir said, having waited until he was sure his secretary was well back down the corridor before opening his mouth.

  ‘Well, people do rush to fill in the blanks when you withhold information,’ Jasmine replied, outlining her agenda. ‘Nature abhors a vacuum.’

  ‘She told me she was eighteen.’

  ‘But you didn’t believe her, did you?’

  Weir sighed, glancing around as though there might be a secret exit he could slip through. Ordinarily, sitting at that great antique desk he’d be in his element, but right then he just looked trapped behind an immovable obstacle.

  ‘You’re right. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was lying about her age because of the drink. I knew she was trying to act more grown-up than she really was, but I’d never have believed she was under sixteen.’

  ‘Yes you would. Otherwise why would you leave her and her brother out of the story?’

  ‘Because I’m a headmaster here in this place, and any kind of moral question mark, however tenuous, can be toxic. But I would never have allowed myself to get involved with her if I’d thought she was underage.’

  ‘Tormod McDonald said she was taken advantage of. Was Mhairi an easy score after you struck out with Tessa?’

  ‘Tormod knows nothing. She wasn’t taken advantage of; far from it. I could see what she was; I could see what they both were: small-town kids who were thrilled to be getting to play at being grown-ups. We didn’t patronise them and we didn’t lead them anywhere they didn’t want to go.’

  ‘And where did Mhairi want to go?’ Jasmine asked.

  ‘Further than I was prepared to take her,’ Weir replied sternly. ‘When I realised Tessa was only interested in Hamish I was a little wounded. The last thing I was looking for was to get involved with somebody else. I was quite withdrawn, in fact, but Mhairi kind of snuck in under the radar because she wasn’t someone with whom I thought anything would happen. Then all of a sudden it did.’

  A hint of a sad smile played across his face.

  ‘She was a sweet girl. More mature than Tormod credited anyway, and with her eyes set on the big wide world. But I could see she was trying a little too hard to be something she was not; or at least something she was not yet. She was a virgin. And she stayed a virgin, though she wanted it to be otherwise.’

  ‘So you did have your concerns that she was underage?’

  ‘I really didn’t. I just felt that it wasn’t my place. It would have spoiled what we had together, because although she said she wanted to, I knew she only thought she wanted to.’

  ‘Why did Tormod think something more had happened?’

  ‘Tormod knew Mhairi and I were an item, shall we say, for a few days, and had no problem with it. But on the same night that Tessa disappeared, he freaked out. He burst into my room and found us in bed together. I thought he was drunk, but I suspect he was on more than just booze. He seemed physically erratic and emotionally strung out. He tried to drag Mhairi from the room, even though she was naked. I restrained him and he started ranting and raving at me, accusing me of corrupting his sister. She told him to fuck off. I don’t just mean that as a figure of speech: Tormod clearly had an issue with “cursing”, as he called it, so she was choosing her words to drive the point home.’

  ‘And did he, as requested, fuck off?’ Fallan asked.

  ‘Yes. He seemed all the more distraught that his sister had rebuffed his rescue attempt and preferred to stay in the clutches of evil and depravity. He went wandering off like a wraith and Mhairi slammed the door behind him.’

  ‘Did the police ask you about this?’ Jasmine asked. ‘You know, when you were being held for questioning, as you neglected to mention the last time we spoke.’

  Weir sighed with exasperation.

  ‘They questioned everybody,’ he said.

  ‘Not at the station.’

  ‘They took me in because someone must have told them about me and Tessa. They were struggling, and it was about the only narrative they could work with: the jealous suitor angle. It was nonsense and they knew it. They didn’t ask me about Mhairi, though.’

  ‘Strange,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘Strange how?’

  ‘It was Tormod who sparked the police inquiry. He told the sergeant, confidentially, that he’d seen a woman being stabbed and then somebody dragging a body in the grounds. But despite his overwrought condition, and how angry he must have been, he can’t have told them about you and Mhairi.’

  ‘No. He must have been protecting her, afraid for her reputation or concerned she’d get into trouble. He was very fond of Mhairi: sibling allies against the rule of their father. But you say he told the police he saw someone stabbed? This is the first I’ve ever heard about it.’

  ‘The sergeant kept a very tight lid on who knew what. He was keen to avoid a scandal, and he had his doubts over the reliability of Tormod’s account for the same reasons you just described: he was distraught and possibly intoxicated.’

  ‘He was pretty out of it,’ Weir agreed. ‘We all were, but neither drugs nor alcohol were the most potent part of the cocktail. We were intoxicated more by feelings of abandon and saturnalia because we knew it was all coming to an end. Even before Tessa left we knew it was falling apart. It’s where the word decadence comes from: to fall away. I think people pushed things further that night because they sensed it was over.’

  ‘Where were the drugs coming from?’ asked Fallan.

  Weir swallowed, looking like a kid who doesn’t want to grass on his mates.

  ‘Darius,’ he eventually replied. ‘He had all sorts of stuff.’

  ‘You guys were up there the best part of a month. That would have to be some size of stash. Well-hidden too, if the police didn’t find anything.’

  ‘I suppose. It wasn’t really my thing. And I’m not just saying that because I have to distance myself from drugs. They’ve never interested me.’

  Fallan nodded understandingly. Jasmine wondered why he’d asked; professional curiosity perhaps. Then he spoke again.

  ‘Mr Weir, we both appreciate the importance of your reputation and we’re grateful for you taking the time to speak to us. I think it’s only fair to inform you that Miss Sharp here just mad
e up a date of birth for Mhairi McDonald, whom we believe to have been at least sixteen and possibly seventeen in the summer of 1981. You don’t have anything to worry about with regard to that story going public.’

  Weir’s eyes flashed with a combination of relief and anger at this revelation, but his outrage at her deceit – not to mention Jasmine’s own dismay at Fallan giving up this leverage – was stemmed by the sense that there was a qualification still to come.

  ‘However,’ he resumed, ‘if in our subsequent inquiries we find out that you have been withholding further information from us, then we will be making the press aware of your connection to Hamish Queen, the various motives you might have for wishing him harm and the fact that you have ready access to rifles and live ammunition.’

  Fallan said nothing for a few moments, letting the silence grow, watching carefully to see what was in Weir’s eyes.

  ‘If you’ve told us everything, then we really have nothing to fear from each other.’

  An expression of resignation fell upon Weir’s face.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, and I haven’t hurt anybody,’ he said. ‘I want to know what happened to Tessa, same as you, but I don’t want to be collateral damage on your quest. There are two things I can’t afford to be tainted by: sexual impropriety and drugs. There was no impropriety about what happened between Mhairi and I, but rumours and innuendo can be enough. As for drugs, same goes. There’s no statute of limitations when it comes to boards of governors.’

  ‘Surely they wouldn’t fire you over a few tokes when you were in your twenties, even if you did inhale?’ Jasmine suggested.

  ‘Have you seen the fees for this place? Do you think parents are going to spend that kind of money sending their children to a boarding school where there’s that kind of question mark over the headmaster?’

  ‘How big a question mark are we talking? More than just a few tokes?’

  ‘Not so much the volume as the supply. As your colleague here seemed to divine, Russell Darius wasn’t the source. I’m going to tell you who was, but on the understanding that my name is kept out of this. Being revealed to have a connection to this man, however tenuous, could be disastrous for me.’