When the Devil Drives

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The gunman had disappeared from view. He had entered a short valley between horizontal spurs where he was temporarily out of sight from the house and, crucially, the house was out of sight to him.

  Fallan had already popped open the boot by remote control. He crouched down at the rear of the vehicle and reached beneath the flap covering the spare wheel. Then he eased the lid gently back into a closed position and took cover behind the oil tank.

  The gunman re-emerged into view only seconds later, a lot closer horizontally than Jasmine had estimated. She ducked down out of sight, spooked momentarily by how near he was. There was no need for binoculars now. She had to see, though. She edged her head up, slowly, terrified that when he came into view again he’d be looking straight back.

  He wasn’t. He had one hand on the stock of the rifle, and with the other he was checking his phone, anticipating possible corrections to his course.

  He didn’t anticipate it ending only a few yards further on, at the edge of the garden, just past that oil tank.

  Fallan emerged behind him, unseen, unheard, silent and steady, his automatic levelled in two hands. From the window, Jasmine saw his finger twitch and a shot rang out across the hillside. The gunman jumped in startlement and not a little pain, clutching a hand reflexively to where his right ear had been nicked. But before he could turn to look at his assailant, Fallan had already ordered him not to move.

  ‘Eyes front. Drop the rifle. Slow and steady. Drop it now. It’s over.’

  The gunman complied, letting the rifle fall to the ground. He placed his hands behind his head and dropped to his knees unbidden in a gesture of surrender.

  Jasmine scanned his features for determination and deceit, but she saw only resignation and annoyance, a man who understood the game he was playing and knew when he had just lost.

  ‘Good lad,’ Fallan told him. ‘No need for anything desperate. Cops will be a lot more interested in Sanquhar than they are in you, so you can cut a deal. Play it smart. Don’t make me shoot you. It’s a long wait for an ambulance out here.’

  Then he called out to Tessa to find something they could restrain him with. She produced several lengths of high-strength climbing cord belonging to her son.

  Fallan ordered the prisoner to lie face down on the grass, keeping the automatic trained on him at all times.

  ‘These ladies here are going to pat you down for further weapons,’ he told him, ‘then they’re going to tie you up like a spatchcock chicken. And just in case you are entertaining any thoughts of how you might turn this situation to your advantage, bear in mind that prison will be even less fun if I’ve had to put a bullet through your wanking hand.’

  Cloistered Flight

  His Range Rover cruised the westbound lanes of the M8 for what he knew must be the last time, smooth and effortless as always, traffic ever more sparse the further out he travelled. He passed landmarks he would never see again: the twin towers of Mackintosh’s Scotland Street school; the exit at Tradeston that he always took for Pacific Quay; grey high-rises and brown warehouses taking on a new poignant aesthetic for being part of what he was leaving behind.

  On he drove, out past Braehead, Hillington, Renfrew, until ahead of him loomed the bridge that spanned the river Cart and took the traffic back down to the exit for Glasgow Airport.

  Holt hadn’t called.

  He said he’d phone at eight with a sit rep, but the call never came. By that time, Julian already knew it was over.

  His brother-in-law had phoned at around seven: his sister’s husband, David. He informed Julian that he believed it was his rifle that had been used to kill Hamish Queen, apropos telling him that the police had been back in touch to confirm this.

  ‘They wanted to know whether you had been to the house recently,’ David said. ‘And they were asking what kind of car you drove. Probably just formalities, but I thought I’d better give you the nod in case somebody’s stitching you up.’

  They had the rifle, they had his connection to its owner and they must have had a vehicle sighting too. Who knew what else.

  ‘I’ll call you at eight,’ Holt had said. ‘By then, everything will be dealt with, and if it’s not I’ll give you a new ETA. Either way, I’ll call. But understand this: there is no fallback position from here on in. In the extremely unlikely event that you don’t hear from me, it’s not because I’m running late or it slipped my mind. It means the worst-case scenario is in play. As a precaution, you may want to pack a bag, look out your passport and liquidate whatever funds you can. The likelihood is about ninety-nine point nine per cent that you won’t need them, but it just depends on your attitude to risk.’

  Julian had made his preparations quietly, laid out the documents and got into the Range Rover. His wife was out for the evening, watching Scottish Ballet at the Theatre Royal, so he was spared the agonising deceit of kissing her goodbye.

  The lights of the airport shone and glimmered below him to the north, traffic in front of him slowing as it approached the exit coming up on his left. Julian put his foot down harder on the accelerator and glided right.

  That wasn’t where he was leaving from.

  Sniper Down

  Catherine was sitting on the decking at the back of the house, the rays of the early evening sunshine warming the back of her neck and refracting little spectra on the wooden table through the liquid prism of her gin and tonic.

  The boys were inside playing Portal 2, which had supplanted Trail of the Sniper as Duncan’s obsession of choice, and thus been the recipient of his unspent report-card funds. In fact, you probably couldn’t have sold Duncan Trail of the Sniper for a pound now, as it was already regarded as ‘pure ancient’ among the summer-club cognoscenti.

  She had given up on her attempts to get them to come outside, away from the computer, and decided she and Drew should just make the most of the peace and quiet instead. Her G&T was going down nicely, the sun was still strong and there was a smell of barbecue on the breeze, whetting her appetite for the steaks Drew had marinated. It was pretty close to bliss.

  But …

  ‘You’ve got that face,’ Drew said, not concerned, but somewhere between solicitous and mildly taking the piss. ‘Like you’re just not quite satisfied. Is it because you didn’t get to clap him in irons?’

  ‘Can’t help but feel that meant it lacked a certain closure,’ she admitted.

  ‘Pretty closed for him, right enough.’

  Julian Sanquhar had killed himself before they could question him. He’d stopped his Range Rover halfway across the Erskine Bridge and thrown himself off. His body was found the following day, washed up near Dumbarton Rock.

  Before leaving the house that night he had written a confession and left it on his desk. In it he admitted to the murder of a young actress called Tessa Garrion at Hamish Queen’s family home of Kildrachan House, Balnavon, in 1981. The letter contained a hand-drawn map showing the location of the old well where he’d disposed of her remains. Excavations were ongoing, but even without a body they knew it was true. Records showed the local police had investigated reports of a suspicious incident at the time, but the case had been dropped. There had been question marks over the reliability of the witness who made the initial reports, and he later withdrew the statement anyway. Sanquhar had got away with it.

  Nobody reported Tessa Garrion missing, not until her estranged sister hired Jasmine Sharp to find her three decades later.

  Jasmine bloody Sharp.

  Sanquhar also confessed to the accidental killing of Hamish Queen at Cragruthes Castle, confirming Catherine’s deduction that the intended victim was Veejay Khan. Veronica Simpson, as she was then, had been making her way home from Kildrachan House on the night of the murder when she bumped into Sanquhar on the path through the woods. She claimed that was all she saw, but Sanquhar assumed otherwise, possibly labouring under this fear for decades. So when Jasmine Sharp began looking for the woman he’d killed, a woman nobody previously knew was even missing, he had
tried to silence the only possible witness to his secret crime: first by trying to shoot her himself, then by hiring a mercenary he’d met in Afghanistan.

  ‘Two murders solved for the price of one,’ she acknowledged. ‘High-profile killing gets wrapped up with a high-profile perp. Brass are delighted. Influence and privilege no impediment to justice, blah blah, blah. Big result. Big result. But something about it … I just don’t know.’

  ‘You never like getting anything handed to you on a plate,’ Drew observed.

  ‘That’s because I don’t like the possibility that the plate’s been very carefully arranged before being handed to me. It’s difficult to feel satisfied with my investigation, having discovered that the whole time I was three steps behind Jasmine Sharp. There’s just something about that girl I don’t trust.’

  Catherine had questioned her in depth the morning after Sanquhar’s suicide and the arrest, a few hours before that, of Len Holt. She’d wanted to strong-arm her a little about withholding information but they both knew Jasmine had done Catherine’s job for her, so it would have just looked like she was over-compensating, not to mention graceless.

  Everything Jasmine gave her was useful, it all added up. So why were Catherine’s alarm bells going off the whole time?’

  ‘Maybe it’s the company she keeps,’ suggested Drew, an insight born of familiarity with how just the mention of Fallan’s name could set Catherine’s teeth on edge.

  He was right. Perhaps it was merely the presence of Fallan in this scenario that was raising her suspicions, affecting the readings on her bullshit detector like the proximity of a magnet affected a compass.

  ‘I suspect you’ve nailed it,’ she said. ‘The girl’s only known him a year, but already I can see a lot of Glen Fallan in her.’

  Delivered

  Mrs Petrie said nothing on the drive north. They had traded brief formalities at the airport, but after getting into Jasmine’s car she didn’t utter a word throughout the hundred and thirty miles to Ardnamurchan. She simply sat and stared, though Jasmine guessed her mind was far away from what she was seeing through the windows of the hired Renault Laguna.

  Jasmine had actually ordered a brand new S-type Honda Civic, but she wouldn’t be taking delivery of it for another tantalising few days. It was a good bit over the budget she’d been considering, but she’d received a substantial payout in compensation for the damage to her mum’s car, and not from the insurance company. (Her problems there looked like being resolved, due to her recently being able to call upon some more sympathetic policing involvement, but it hadn’t been insured for much.)

  Sanquhar’s hitman, Len Holt, had turned out to be driving a black BMW X6. It was a four-wheeled grotesquerie, in whose case the acronym SUV ought to stand for Singularly Unnecessary Vehicle, but most significantly it wasn’t a silver Volkswagen Passat, leaving the outstanding question of who had petrol-bombed her car.

  Laura Geddes had got Traffic to look back at the CCTV images from the camera on Nitshill Road closest to the junction leading to her office. They found the Passat leaving, at speed, at the precise time and date Jasmine had specified. They got a plate and from there furnished Jasmine with a name and address, but this only confirmed what Fallan had already coaxed her to remember.

  ‘You said you were spooked the first time you saw this vehicle, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the first time you’d seen it. You had seen it before, and so when you became aware of it outside your office, something subconscious said “threat”. On some previous occasion you briefly saw someone driving it, or getting in or out of it, and thought about the danger he represented. If somebody had asked you ten minutes later what this guy drove, you probably wouldn’t remember. At the time you were focused on the person, but your subconscious registered the car he was in too.’

  They went to his address, a small modern semi in Baillieston, where the Passat sat outside in the driveway. Jasmine stood behind Fallan, keeping her head down and her face out of sight, and let him do the talking.

  ‘We’re here about the advert,’ Fallan said, holding up a copy of that week’s Autotrader, hot off the press.

  ‘Advert?’ he replied testily. ‘I’m not selling my car.’

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll find that you are, Liam,’ Fallan told him, at which point Jasmine stepped into view of the lecherous ODA whose career she had recently ended.

  Liam tried to close the front door but Fallan was way too quick. He got an arm up his back and frogmarched him into his tip of a living room, Jasmine following them inside, reflecting that it would be quite an understatement to say the place needed a woman’s touch.

  ‘We know you petrol-bombed my colleague’s Honda,’ Fallan told him, plonking him down in a horrible armchair. ‘There’s CCTV footage of you driving away from the scene.’

  Fallan opened the magazine at the appropriate page and dropped it in O’Hara’s lap.

  ‘At two years old that model goes for up to twelve grand. You’re advertising at ten for a quick sale. You get the money to Jasmine within seven days and we don’t take it any further.’

  Liam looked up with a scowl.

  ‘CCTV footage proves nothing. It would take more than that to convince the polis I had anything to do with it.’

  Fallan gave a quiet little laugh. It sounded like knuckles cracking.

  ‘I’m not worried about whether it convinces the polis. It’s enough to convince me. Jasmine, would you give us a minute? I just need to explain some of the complexities to Liam here.’

  Jasmine went outside to the Land Rover and Fallan followed a minute or so later. She didn’t know what he did or said, but five days later O’Hara turned up at the office and handed her an envelope containing ten thousand pounds in cash.

  Shoppiness ensued.

  She toured a few showrooms, even did some test drives on other makes and models, but she always knew what she’d be buying.

  Another few days and it would be hers.

  The Laguna was a smooth ride, ideal for a long trip such as this one. She put on some music, soft and low, something to cover the silence. It was plain before they’d even made it to Erskine that there wasn’t going to be any conversation.

  As they crossed the great span of the bridge Jasmine glanced at the plunging forty-metre drop to the Clyde and wondered about Julian Sanquhar’s final moments. By that time Mrs Petrie was already in another place, alone with her thoughts.

  How did you prepare yourself for something like this?

  Jasmine and Fallan had joked about how they might break it to her.

  ‘Well, Mrs Petrie, the bad news is, you’re going to have to attend your sister’s funeral. The good news is, it won’t be your sister you’re burying.’

  Ah, yes.

  Sharp Investigations: conspiring to pervert the course of justice since …

  It was Sanquhar’s suicide that made it possible, together with the confession he left behind. Otherwise the real Tessa Garrion would be going to jail, belatedly punished for the desperate acts of a frightened young woman in the aftermath of being raped.

  ‘Why would he say he killed you and not Saffron?’ Jasmine had asked her.

  ‘Looking at his career knowing what I do now,’ Tessa said, ‘I think Julian spent his whole life trying to compensate for what he had done. He was at his best, probably at his happiest, when he was making things happen for other people: selfless and pragmatic. Perhaps this was his last chance to do that.’

  ‘A final act of decency and yet a final act of deceit.’

  ‘Yes. He’s given me the only reparation he could, but it means there will never be any justice for poor Saffron.’

  ‘There is no justice for the dead,’ said Fallan. ‘Sometimes that troubles us, but the truth is I’ve yet to hear one of them complain about it. In this case, all that truly matters is what’s best for those who are still alive.’

  Jasmine could see Tessa already waiting in the back garden as the Laguna crested the final spur, the small figur
es of three children buzzing around her like electrons as she stood and watched the road. From the rear of the house it was possible to spot a vehicle’s approach from quite some distance, but Jasmine doubted she would have been able to see this one coming a few short weeks ago.

  At the sight of the car making its final approach an attractive young woman came out and ushered the children indoors: Tessa’s daughter-in-law, Fiona. She entered the house just as Jaffir Khan left it, striding out to stand next to his wife for support.

  Jasmine pulled into the driveway behind three other vehicles and climbed out of the Laguna. She was about to walk around and open the passenger-side door for her client, but Mrs Petrie was already out and walking towards her sister.

  The last time Jasmine arrived at this garden, Tessa Garrion had collapsed under the weight of revelation. This time it was Mrs Petrie who stumbled, breaking down in tears as she fell against Tessa and threw her arms around her.

  ‘My wee girl,’ Alice Petrie said, sobbing, clinging, eyes shut tight. ‘My wee girl. My wee girl.’

  Jasmine felt the world freeze-frame for a moment. All of the evidence had been before her from the start, but only now did she understand.

  The age difference of sixteen years. The resentment of the freedoms encouraged in Tessa but denied to her. The bitterness, born of harsh consequence, towards Tessa’s confidence and ambition, her ‘passion and impulse’. The easeful temptation of gradually losing touch and pretending as though she’d never existed.

  And then the desperate, aching need to make this right while there was still time.

  Tessa wasn’t her sister.