“Meet at the airport?” I asked him, getting my coat back on and grabbing my box.
“Yeah, I’ll be there by ten-fifteen. I need to go rent myself a car before then though.” He was right. The van was far too distinctive to run around in conveniently. I waited while he layered up again and we walked out together. “Lend me your gym pass, will you?” he asked. “I need a place to shower and change too.” Shay was my listed ‘guest’ there, although he hadn’t used the place before. I dug the pass out and handed it over. He pocketed it, gave me a brief, fierce hug and then slouched off down the road, disappearing around the next corner before I’d crossed the road and was getting into my car.
The whole team was already in when I got back to the station. “Oh, cheers boss!” An unsurprised but wolfish smile from Collins when I dropped the box onto his desk. That lad had hollow legs, as da would say. I’d seen young Mark in action at the feeding trough; his capacity was truly exceptional.
“No.” Caitlin moved fast, pushing the lid firmly closed again before he’d got it half-open, and snatching up the box. “All messy food must be consumed in the break room, Collins, and the others can blame you for that new rule. You’re the one who needed a new keyboard ordering after last time.”
Sad but true. We had found that there was a limit to what salvage efforts should reasonably be made when we’d started dismantling the gummed-up thing for a thorough cleaning a couple of days later. Not worth the trouble.
After Caitlin had dumped the box and got the kettle on for everyone, I caught her eye and motioned her towards my office. She shut the door behind her when I gestured.
“You’re spoiling the lot of them, you do realise that, don’t you, Conall?” she warned me as she sat down. “I feel very sorry for whoever has to follow your act, I really do.”
“Pot, kettle, black, Sergeant Murray. Now, before you go back out there to tell them how proud mummy is of them all, I just wanted to take a minute to have a private word with you on a sensitive issue.” That made her sit up a bit.
“Oh?”
“It’s about Shay Keane,” I told her. “He’s one of ours, well, the Justice Directorate’s anyway. I’ve come across him before.”
“What?” Wide-eyed surprise became narrow-eyed disfavour very quickly, “You know him? And you didn’t even bat an eyelid when you were lying through your teeth about it yesterday?”
“Sorry to be the one to break it to you, Caitlin, but gag orders from that high up aren’t something I’d advise anyone to take lightly. Shay’s security clearances are through the roof and stretch all the way back to London.” She had an ‘Oh shit!’ moment as that sank in. “Look,” I continued doggedly, “need to know means need to know, so you’re in it with me now, like it or not. I get the impression he’s viewed as a bit of a maverick oddball, even by that lot, but he was very helpful when our paths crossed before, a real asset actually.” She digested that with an arched eyebrow.
“Likes you, does he? Professionally speaking, of course. Why am I not surprised? So, what’s he doing up at the Kerrs?”
“Chasing down a potential link to a disgusting piece of human garbage called Pete Ferguson.” I allowed myself a couple of minor swings of the chair instead of throwing or breaking anything.
“Wendy McGregor’s Pete Ferguson?”
I nodded. “The same. I’ll fill you in as we go along, but do I have to tell you that you can’t talk to anyone about Mr Keane? And I mean anyone. This isn’t just a potential career-breaker Caitlin, it could have much worse consequences than that. Keep it well zipped, alright?”
“Like you just did, you mean?” I just gave her a look. “Oh, right. When did you have your little confab then?”
“Over breakfast this morning.” The blankest stare I could muster dared her to even think of making a joke out of that. It did its job. “Now, why don’t you go have a nice cuppa with the kids whilst I put together a little to-do list for everyone? You and I are heading up to the airport in an hour.”
Burning with curiosity or not, Caitlin could take even a subtle hint and didn’t need to be bludgeoned by an indirect order more than once. She scooted with commendable speed.
It took me less than fifteen minutes to put together a slideshow, an info packet, and a task list. I emailed that to the whole team then went to break up their impromptu tea party, turning down the offer of a cuppa and topping up my water instead.
“Team meeting in five,” I warned them after a verbal pat on the head all round and went to connect my laptop to the TV screen mounted on the wall, and wheel the chairs out from behind the desks. They all appeared promptly, en masse, and settled down with time to spare.
“Some of the searches I set in motion yesterday threw up a couple of red flags down in Edinburgh,” I told them from my perch on Caitlin’s desk. “You’ll find an email containing all you need to know when you get back to your desks. The gist of it is that we have received a request directly from the office of the Secretary of Justice to do everything possible to discover if any of the three parties of interest they have listed for our attention are currently operating within our area. A strictly ‘observe and report’ request. No direct interference unless we believe someone may be in real danger, understood?”
Lots of solemn nods and yes sirs; this was some serious, high-level stuff! I put up the first slide.
“This is Mr Pete Ferguson, a man who may or may not be connected to the murder of Gareth Ramsay. Mr Ferguson has risen over the years to the status of a minor Glasgow crime boss by trafficking in drugs and stolen goods, using his loyal, dependent customers as a private little army of thieves and rent boys. Gareth’s younger brother, Archie, was once numbered among them.”
They all soaked up the image on the screen, trying to reconcile my words to the face they were looking at. For a man fast approaching sixty, Pete Ferguson was in exceptionally good shape. The lines on his face were no more than the kindly tracks of decades of cheerful laughter, his skin mainly firm and unblemished by age, eyes sharp and clear, teeth white and even and his thick head of dark hair was only slightly greyed at the temples. A pleasant-looking man, even now. I showed them a few more shots of him. He took good care of himself, our poisonous peacock, vain of his appearance.
“I don’t know who or how or when, but Mr Ferguson must have made at least one powerful person very angry indeed,” I told them before moving on to the next subjects. “These two gentlemen are known associates of Mr Ferguson’s. Jimmy Crawford on the left and Mike Gordon on the right. You may notice that they resemble prize-fighters, but their chosen profession is that of gangland enforcers. They enjoy getting well paid to beat the crap out of people and occasionally do a few other things to them too.”
I showed them a few pictures of their work, documented evidence shots. None of my DCs looked particularly happy to hear or see any of this. None of them had any previous experience of dealing with this class of criminal.
“If any of these men are in Inverness or the surrounding area, we need to know of it yesterday,” I told them. “Locate, observe and report.”
Next, I pulled up the driving licences of Mr Boyd and Mr Peters, nicely blown up, good clear shots. Collins looked a little startled to see those. He was probably wondering how on earth I’d tracked them down. Well, he’d soon find out from Walker and Mills about the photos Jessica had taken, which should cover that nicely.
“These two are only of interest to us and to our case. They are known con artists who got onto the Kerr estate by pretending to be detectorists in search of historical artefacts. We very much want to speak with them. If you find either of them, you get them in here as quickly as you can. DC Walker, you will hand out the assignments to your junior colleagues in order of priority and according to everyone’s personal strengths. There’s a long list of jobs to get through. Traffic cam footage, public CCTV, hotel and guest house bookings, rental car agencies, pop-ins at pubs and nightclubs and restaurants and all the rest. You all know the drill. Fo
cus your attention on the past week and get on as best you can while I’m out. I might decide to call McKinnon to ask for extra hands later this morning, if you don’t find anything by then. Understood? Any questions?”
“Sir?” DC Walker looked more than a little alarmed, “May we know where you’re going, Sir? And for how long?” A reasonable question.
“Sergeant Murray and I are going to speak with Gareth Ramsay’s nephew, a man whose existence only became known to us yesterday, and who the Justice Directorate had also overlooked, apparently. He is currently being flown in from Fife to speak to us. I don’t think we’ll be gone for more than two hours at the most. Any other questions?”
There was not, I was happy to see, although they all had plenty rolling around in their heads, jostling for attention; just nothing that they felt justified in slowing us down with right now. I disconnected my laptop and turned off the screen whilst they all took their chairs back to their desks and started going through the file I’d sent them. We might arrive at the airport a few minutes early, if traffic was light, but that was preferable to risking turning up late.
Once I’d grabbed what I wanted from my office, I found Caitlin ready and waiting, so we went off to meet my cousin, and a helicopter.
Twenty
Caitlin
As Conall pulled our car out and headed us towards the airport, I began to read through the file he’d sent to us all on my phone. His earlier confession had shocked me more than a little, I must admit. I mean, of course, I got it. Not that I’d ever had any contact with one of our government’s secret ‘assets’ before myself, but I did know enough about how things worked to understand why Conall had been obliged to keep mum about it. That wasn’t what worried me. It was how naturally and easily he’d put on that little performance up at the camp yesterday.
As I replayed it in my head, there hadn’t been the slightest slip or tiniest hint of anything odd going on. Conall had been his most natural, relaxed and capable self. It’s unsettling, to find that a person you worked closely with every day and considered to be one of the most decent, most honest people on the planet was capable of that level of polished deception. No wonder Mr Keane approved of him. He couldn’t come across many detectives capable of handling an encounter like that so smoothly. What had Conall said after?
“I’d be very surprised to find that Mr Keane had any part in the murder of Gareth Ramsay…” Something like that anyway, nothing in the least attention-grabbing. And he’d sidestepped the issue of whether he thought the man was dangerous as neatly as you please too. “To himself? Or to anyone else?” Like a little joke.
Christ! I found myself wondering what else he might be hiding. You can’t help doing that if that’s the way you’ve trained your brain to view the world. Conall knew it too. I noticed the unhappy little glances he kept firing my way, wondering if this was going to become a problem. I promised myself I’d make damned sure it didn’t. He was better at his job than I’d thought. Why make an issue of it? He was still the same old Conall.
“So, this Pete Ferguson character had Archie under his thumb since he was what, eighteen, nineteen?” I finally said when I’d finished reading. “And we think he’s still after the missing sovereigns from that last job, sixteen years ago?”
“It does seem highly probable, yes. Whether or not that connects to our case remains to be seen, but SEJD has asked for our fullest cooperation on their own investigation, and that’s what they’re getting.” Yeah, we didn’t have any choice about that. When your boss’s, boss’s, boss’s boss says jump, you’d better strap on some bloody good springs.
“And Billy McGregor? Or McIntyre now, I suppose.” He’d taken his mum’s maiden name, a clear enough statement of where his filial loyalties firmly lay. “Three years in the wind, and then, a few weeks after Archie meets his maker, a little ‘accident’ leaves Billy looking like he’s been given a professional working over. What do you make of it?”
Conall indicated a left turn and pulled us off the A96 before answering. More flat, wide-open fields on either hand as we began to eat up the last few miles. It was all very pretty in the bright morning sunshine.
“The same as anyone with a suspicious mind would. I agree with Mr Keane, the chances that Pete Ferguson found Billy are pretty high, and whatever Archie did or did not tell his son, we need to know as much as he’s willing to tell us about that meeting.” Poor Billy. Making the decision to visit his biological father had to be the biggest regret of his life.
When we reached the airport, Conall showed his warrant card and was told that we were expected. We were waved straight through to drive around the access road to the helicopter pad. Another car, an unremarkable grey Ford Focus, was already parked up waiting. A smartly suited figure in a long black coat emerged as Conall and I climbed out, and it took me a moment to see past the smart tailoring, erect posture, and rigorously slicked-back hair. Despite the sunglasses, that face, when it turned in our direction, could not belong to anyone but Shay Keane.
“Chief Inspector.” He smiled, pleased, as he shook Conall’s hand vigorously. “Belated congratulations on your promotion by the way. Well deserved. And Sergeant Murray. How nice to meet you again.” He had a good, firm grip. I hadn’t noticed yesterday, under his baggy top and baggier trousers, how fit a figure the man cut. “Good timing, Con. They’re less than five minutes out.”
Con? That was a new one for me.
“Where are we doing this?” Conall wanted to know, not looking quite so pleased as Mr Keane did.
“Straight to business, same as ever I see.” How well did these two know each other? “I’ve bagged us a suitable room in the admin block. No need to run Billy into town and out again. We’re moving him on to a nice little country safe house once we’re done here.” The transformation from a twitchy, self-effacing little bundle of nerves to this confident ‘man in charge’ persona was remarkable. I noticed he’d lost most of the Irish lilt from his accent too. “You’re alright with me taking the lead on this one?”
“Not that it would make any difference if I wasn’t, but yes, it’s fine by me.” That Hollywood visage winced a little at the interdepartmental shot so Conall added a calculatedly mild, “I know you can be nice enough when you find it to be the more productive method of approach, Shay.” No, Conall was not at all pleased to be thrust back into this one’s orbit of operations. The answering smile he got in return was not quite as pleasant.
“Subject to the requirements, etc. Yes, Inspector, I can be ever so nice when it suits me, just like you can. Please don’t let that nasty temper of yours get the better of you and spoil the fun. It’s always been such a lovely change to work with a real professional when we’ve crossed paths before.”
Nasty temper? A little private joke, surely? They exchanged a look I couldn’t quite decipher, but then a distant, low, percussive whirring sound warned us of the approaching helicopter.
“The escort will hand Billy over to you two,” Mr Keane told us. “If he starts asking questions in the car, just say everything will be explained once we’re all settled. You can follow us in.”
Conall nodded, which seemed satisfactory, and we all turned to watch the approaching twin-engine T3 airbus. A relatively quiet bird, but the breeze it threw out as it came in to settle still blew our hair about, except for Mr Keane’s which had been glued into petrified submission and wouldn’t dare let even a single strand of fringe get loose.
Once the rotors had wound down, the nearside rear door opened and another ‘Men in Black’ lookalike emerged, followed by Billy, I presumed, wearing jeans and a jacket, and then another suited clone. They stalked across to us, guiding hands laid lightly on Billy’s shoulders.
“Mr Keane.” One of them acknowledged his existence with a curt nod of recognition. Chatty fellows, his lot. Conall stepped forwards, snapping his warrant card open for Billy to inspect.
“Mr William McIntyre? If you would kindly come with us, Sir?” He gestured towards our car.
>
Billy, recognising something approaching human normality in Conall’s face and tone, took a hesitant step towards us, then another. He was a bonny young man, but very rattled looking just then.
“What’s all this about? What’s going on? They wouldn’t tell me anything…” As Conall shepherded him carefully away from the MIBs.
“There you go, Sir, just mind your head there; easy does it.” Conall closed the door on him softly, and we both climbed in again. “Buckle up please, Billy. There’s a good lad.”
He did so, fumbling it a little. “They just turned up and said I was being taken into protective custody, but when I asked why they wouldn’t say anything. What’s going on, Inspector? Do you all think I’ve done something wrong?”
“No, you’re not in any sort of trouble, Billy, so don’t worry yourself about that. We’re just going to go into that building over there,” a helpfully pointing finger, “and then all your questions will be answered.” Conall smoothly turned and set off behind the Ford, back towards the cluster of buildings that made up our little regional airport. “How was the flight? Were you treated alright?”
“What? Yes, it was fine. But we all had to put ear protectors on, which I didn’t think was at all necessary, and then I couldn’t even ask them anything.”
“Mmm, that’s the trouble with helicopters. Ever been on one before? I’m not too keen myself.” Two more minutes of distracting chatter, and we were parked up and following the MIBs down a white corridor, then through a doorway into a little conference room, losing the pair from the helicopter to stand guard outside as they shut the door behind us.
“Sit down please, Mr McIntyre.” Mr Keane held a chair for him before motioning for me to take the one next to it and leading Conall round to the other side. The poor lad looked freshly frightened as he dropped into his seat. Keane placed a folder on the table before him. “Your family is safe,” he told Billy. The best possible opening, I thought. “We’re keeping a good eye on them all.”
Dark of Night Page 20
