Lies of the Land

by Chris Dolan

  Muddy Maddy.

  “I have a question. When you searched the Crichtons’ house, did anyone notice a medal?”

  “Medal?”

  “You know, one of those cheap things you get for running a race, or winning a golf competition.”

  “Not that I know of.” Then he remembered. “There was one in Marion Miller’s living room. Like that?”

  She nodded. “Tell them to look out for one at Hughes’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “Just, it looked so out of place in the Millers’.”

  “Is that the only reason?” Coulter was immediately suspicious.

  “Yeah. What else?”

  He was about to counter that when a young woman, wearing a barista’s apron, entered and came straight over to their table.

  “Sorry for interrupting. Only Hollie happened to see you come in. From across the way?” Epicures was situated across the road from Nick’s, the restaurant where Miller, Crichton and Fulton had all had a meal, the night before all hell broke loose. “They said you’d been in a week or so back asking about the night Mr Hughes was in.”

  “That’s right, we were.” Coulter angled his position fully towards her. “Sorry, you are…?”

  “Kirsty. Kirsty Nolan.” A pretty girl, but she didn’t elicit quite the same response from the inspector as the glam waitress had. His interest was professional. “They said I should maybe tell you.”

  “Tell us what, Kirsty?”

  “The table that night was booked for three. Mr Hughes, and I know now from reading the papers, Mr Miller and Mr Crichton. But they were joined by a fourth man, a bit later.”

  Now she had the full attention of them both. “Someone they just met in passing, in the bar?”

  “No. He was with them for most of the meal. Think he might have missed the starter, but it was a table for four, and he sat with them.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward with this before?”

  “I didn’t know you were interested. I’ve been on holiday since. Not away on holiday, like, but time off the restaurant, studying. I started back last night and nobody was talking about it, then when Hollie saw you, she remembered, and remembered I’d been on that night.”

  “What can you tell us about this fourth man? What did he look like?”

  The girl shrugged. Wanting to help but not sure what to say. “They all look the same to me, middle-aged men. Oh God, sorry,” she suddenly reddened, looking away from Coulter to Maddy. “I mean, I just serve them. I don’t notice much…”

  Coulter had the grace to laugh. But quickly turned serious again. “Is there anything you can remember, Kirsty? How was he dressed? Was a bit older, younger maybe?”

  “They all had suits on. He must have had too, I think. Otherwise I might have noticed.”

  “Did he speak quietly or loudly,” Maddy asked.

  Kirsty brightened: “Yeah, maybe he did. I mean, like the rest of them, the more they drink the louder they get. But I kinda remember him having a loud voice.”

  “But nothing that he said?”

  She shook her head.

  “How much later did he get there?”

  “Maybe about three-quarters of an hour after the other three?”

  “And when did he leave?”

  “As soon as he finished eating? I think.”

  They both knew she was guessing to keep them happy. She had no real idea. “Listen, I’m really sorry. I’d have told you before if I’d known it was important.”

  It was important – and DS Russell should have made sure that everyone connected to Nick’s knew that. His sergeant had let the ball drop again.

  “Kirsty, I’m going to get an officer to come over to Nick’s tonight. That okay? How long are you on for?”

  “Till closing time. Yeah, sure. Of course.” Like most people she didn’t like the idea of having her details taken down by police. In front of colleagues and punters. As she turned to go, Maddy touched her wrist gently. “Thanks, Kirsty. That was really useful.”

  After she’d gone out, Maddy and Coulter turned to each other. “Any ideas?”

  “Doesn’t sound like Harkins.”

  “He’d have stuck out like a sore thumb.”

  “Another builder? Another lawyer?”

  “You thinking Doug Mason? Nah, even Kirsty would have noticed he’s younger. And better looking.”

  “A middle-aged, middle-class, nondescript man. Jesus.”

  “Whoever he is … there’s quite possibly a Glock pistol being loaded for him right now.”

  “Or he’s loading it himself, for someone else.” Coulter looked miserable. This case was killing him. Half of Glasgow’s policemen assigned to it, holidays cancelled, costs rocketing, the press baying for blood. Everyone was beginning to hate the hitherto popular detective inspector. His boss, his colleagues, journalists and their readers, countrywide.

  He paid and left, after another sad, avuncular warning for her to watch her back at COPFS. Maddy finished her coffee scanning the café’s paper – trying to find something that wasn’t related to the killings. She and Norma Jeane exchanged a couple of smiles. As she left she thought, if she buttoned up different…

  Despite everything, she felt serene in the night air, looking forward to her walk home. Trying not to enumerate the problems in her life. When a Cruise missile suddenly blew the night to smithereens.

  “Flutterby!!”

  He lurched out – of all places – Nick’s, shock-white hair to the four winds, both arms rotating, fag end beaconing like a night flare. He tried to run across the road to her – well, another lurch, anorak and scarf sailing – and just about got himself run over. So he stood at the kerb, still waving, grinning like a child. A big, lumbering, tipsy, old child.

  At first she couldn’t move, stuck to the spot, staring at this vision. Dreamlike, her father’s jacket and scarf floating in the breeze, his wild white hair, his lit cigarette… She hadn’t seen the man in over a decade. Not even a photograph. He didn’t look real; he looked like a phantom of her father, some deep-seated projection of him. But she found herself crossing the road, slowly, checking for cars in her peripheral vision. Until she was within a foot or two of him. Packie Shannon. In Glasgow. In her life. Now, close to him, as physical, as meaty, as there as it was possible to be. The sheer presence of him, the heft.

  He opened his arms and took a step towards her. Then abruptly stopped, receiving some unspoken message from her. A message she didn’t even know she was sending out herself.

  “Maddy.”

  That voice, deep, baked, and smoky. He looked older. Of course he would. The old muscle looser than it was, his hair still thick and hearty but whiter now than a blizzard. She’s a rabbit in the night caught in the headlight glare of an oncoming scooter.

  “Dad.”

  He decided against the hug, and reached for her hand instead. They stood there, wobbling on the kerb, hands held lightly, looking at one another. The eyes hadn’t aged. The new wrinkles around them only emphasised their small, slightly mad, vigour. Memories, thoughts, judgements writhed like eels, not only in her head but throughout her body. He wasn’t a bad man. Never had been. He’s a bastard, always was. He’s nuts, he’s fun, he’s dangerous. When he’s here he’s here too much; when he’s absent he’s the hole in her psyche the cold wind wails through. She hated him – no, she just couldn’t handle him; resented what he had done, leaving them. She missed him, loved him. She couldn’t get away quick enough, but was paralysed.

  “I knew you lived somewhere round here.”

  She didn’t speak but he answered her question. “No, I didn’t come looking for you. Just ended up here.”

  “How?” Her voice sounded like a child, wondering and wondrous.

  “I’m in Glasgow for business.” For business? “You never answered my message.” He gave her his old mock-angry look, and she couldn’t stop herself smiling.

  “You’ll never guess.” If ever there was a Packie Shannon phra
se, that was it. No, she wouldn’t, ever. Never had done.

  “I met this guy. Fantastic. You’d love him, Maddy. Lives around here.”

  “Where?”

  “I dunno. Somewhere,” he swept his arm majestically in a half circle, and nearly fell of the pavement, “here.”

  “No, I mean, where did you meet him?” That wasn’t what she meant either. She meant, where would he meet anyone? Where was he living? What’s his life?

  “In Ireland. The Aul’ Sod. You should come over. You’ve cousins there dying to meet you.”

  His mother’s family was from that area, somewhere north, inland, of Dublin, she remembered. Maddy had never met her paternal grandmother, dead before she was born. After his grand tour of Italy, Packie had decided to go back to his roots, pre-Scotland.

  “I run a wee bed and breakfast, and there’s this guy comes over to stay, every couple of months. The guy from round here. And d’you know what he comes over to do? Build a wall of death! How’s that for crazy?”

  Maddy could not at that moment imagine what a wall of death was. The phrase was familiar, but it fed into the still surreal feel of this meeting. Her father. Walls. Death.

  “Man’s a fecking genius. Anyway, I’ve been giving him a hand. I mean, there are two aul’ fellas who are building the contraption with him.”

  Maddy knew who he was talking about. An artist with some kind of East European name. Skrynk? Skynka? She’d once seen an installation of his. In the Clyde tunnel, the one you can walk or cycle through, if you have a death wish. This guy had repainted the entire thing, and had a male voice choir singing the length of it. She’d loved it, the crazy unexpectedness of it. She’d seen the guy walking around with his dogs; the running girls at the baths all fancied him. For good reason. Trust her dad to know him personally.

  “I just source some materials for them. Transport stuff around. I’m picking up some gear tomorrow to…. Ach never mind that. I’m here. With you. My baby. Flutterby.”

  So much in that little speech to process. Never mind what? Was it really sheer accident that he was not only in Glasgow but on her patch? Why is he here, does he have some kind of plan, a strategy? Her dad was always full of plans, not all of them crazy, some even came to fruition. His baby, his Flutterby. Did he have any notion the effect those words had on her? Being lifted up, swung around, the taste of Girvan sea spray, the smell of hot oil and vinegar. Being kissed goodnight when she thought everything was settled in the world. That justice and honesty were the foundations of life.

  Trying to shut these useless thoughts down and find a reasonable reply, the door of Nick’s swung open again, and out popped cousin Dante carrying two half-drunk pints.

  “Patrizio!” Then he spotted Maddy and immediately straightened up, trying to disguise his shit-faced state. “Maddalena.”

  So that’s where he had gone – swept up in the hurricane that was her father. She could have kissed him. Cousin Dante had broken the powerful hex of the moment and allowed her an escape.

  “People have been looking for you, Dante.”

  “Aye well, they don’t normally,” he said bitterly.

  “Go get Maddy a drink, Danny.” Trading nationalities, clans. Irish Dante, Italian Packie. Another of her dad’s old hobbies. And still stealing bits of her mother’s life; of the woman, and daughter, he’d left, confiscating what was important to them. “What’ll you have?”

  “Sorry. Can’t. I have a heavy day tomorrow. Tired. I have to go.”

  Packie looked genuinely dismayed. “But we’ve only just met. First time in so many years, Maddy.”

  And who’s fault was that? Well, actually, partly hers at least, to be honest. “Dad. You can’t just turn up on the pavement late at night and expect me to drop my life.”

  “Yeah. Of course. Sorry. But we’ll meet, yeah?”

  She nodded. He took out his phone and keyed in her number. When he had finally bought her her first phone over twenty years ago he’d been dead set against them. Now he was a practised hand: the iPhone genuflection.

  “How long are you in town for?”

  “That depends.” On what, she wondered, but didn’t ask. The look in his eye suggested that it depended to some extent on her. “Two or three days.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in touch.” She wanted to tell Dante to contact Rosa, tell her he was all right. But that would mean alerting her mother to Packie’s presence. If that could be avoided, the better for everyone. Why did it always seem that Maddy was the lock chamber, the mechanism that controls the flow of information, damming the truth, being forced into lying.

  Packie stroked her hair lightly and fleetingly as she turned to cross back over the road. “What’s your address, darling?”

  She glanced round, but at Dante: “Think you’ll find they don’t have a late licence for alcohol in the street.” Ever the enforcer.

  Is there anywhere more disturbing than a hospital at night? Even WPC Alison Morrison, twenty-eight years old, Facebook open on her Sony Xperia Z3, organising next weekend’s high jinks and swapping photographs of last week’s, felt it. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to use it in a hospital, but she wasn’t going to sit here all night without it. It’s not just being surrounded by sickness and imminent death – that’s all there during the day too. It’s the dark outside; the window across from her is pure black, the way the subdued lighting of the room hits it. Interrupted every now and then only by the distant flickering of some plane descending into Glasgow International. But that just adds to the sense of loneliness: there are people, but they’re so far away, probably asleep, dropping silently down through the sky. She remembered reading somewhere – maybe about Lockerbie? – that it took the victims, still safety-belted into their seats, several minutes to fall the five miles to the ground below. The image had stayed with her, because it terrified her.

  Inspector Alan Coulter was looking out his window, too, into nothing. He hadn’t gone home after seeing Maddy, though he’d thought that was where he was going. Instead, he’d ended back at the station. There was, he realised once he got there, a reason for doing it. Go see Harkins. See if the man had had enough. If he was willing to give them anything. But he decided to give it another half hour yet. There was no rush. Martha would be in bed – what difference would it make if he got home before or after midnight?

  Over the river, Bill Crichton stirred in his bed. The first time he’d done that, Alison had nearly jumped out her skin. She happened to have been alone with him in the room at the time – about an hour ago. She’d gone and fetched a nurse. It was to be expected, she was told. A good sign. They were slowly decreasing the medication, and Mr Crichton was responding. Not much, Alison thought, glancing at him now. His breathing was a little different maybe. A little faster? An arm or a leg would judder a bit about every twenty minutes or so. That’s why she’d been positioned back in this bloody ward. In case he said anything. Fat chance. He wasn’t responding in any way to Marion Miller, sitting by his side. It was her watch right now. Quite apt, the policewoman reckoned: the wife on duty during the day, the mistress by night. She wasn’t touching him. Alison got the feeling that, tonight at least, Marion was thinking something through, trying to make up her mind. The woman’s brow would furrow, then she’d half nod as if the decision had been taken, but she’d glance at the patient again and the brow would furrow once more. Going over the same ground. Alison wondered if old Bill knew what was happening to him. Coming out of his coma. Like a dying man strapped to a chair tumbling slowly back to earth.

  Coulter had only needed two minutes with Harkins; Harkins needed less. The man was for telling them nothing. Not yet anyway. They’d hardly spoken.

  “You ready?”

  “For what? Tell you what, Inspector. You tell me what you want to hear and I’ll repeat it back to you.”

  Both men knew the investigation was taking a shot in the dark. But Coulter, wrapping his coat around him now and stepping out into the crisp, quiet night, felt that some
thing was shifting inside Joe Harkins. Brought on by fear, yes, but only partly. Keeping him in custody, keeping the pressure up, wasn’t a one-way street. It had given Harkins time to think. Throw them something. Anything. A name, or names, that’ll send them off in the wrong direction. They were assuming that Joe was just a minor piece in the puzzle. What if they were wrong? What if Harkins was much more involved in these killings than they reckoned? Coulter smiled to himself – head down, resolving to walk the hour it would take him to get home – one thing’s for certain: nobody’s been killed since Joe’s been locked up.

  An incoming flight, late from Warsaw, was turning over the Clyde, dipping into Whiteinch. Both WPC Morrison and DI Coulter clocked it, vaguely. Their minds were on two men, locked up in their own ways. Left hanging. A word from either could change everything. Or nothing.

  Maddy was dealing with more words than she could handle. It was eight in the evening in Queens, New York, one in the morning in Lorraine Gardens. Louis, after forty minutes of talking round in circles, looked every bit as drained as she felt. She was bringing the Glasgow night to him.

  It’s a bad sign when you start quoting James Joyce. “Every bond is a bond to sorrow.”

  “I don’t think I’ve caught you on a good night, Maddy.”

  “There aren’t many of those these days, Lou.”

  “Maybe we should do this tomorrow? Or after your father’s gone. Though I’d like to have met him.”

  Have met him. Past tense. This wasn’t an ordinary break-up conversation. The norm is that one of the parties wants to split. The power that Louis, she now conceded, quite innocently, had over her these last few days, had dissipated. They were on an equal footing. Heads and hearts both roughly in the same place. Which, ordinarily, would be a good thing. He probably just meant that he wouldn’t meet Packie on this particular occasion.

  But it was only a matter of time before they had to face up to realities. They lived in different countries. They both had jobs, lives, families they couldn’t, even if they wanted to, give up. Had one of them been rich then there might have been a way forward. But a middle-ranking cop and a provincial procurator fiscal? They couldn’t even afford to nip over for visits more than twice a year, if that. First World problems: budget flights just ain’t budget enough. People in the Ukraine, Syria were being bombed, shot, forced to flee. It didn’t make the pain of this situation any easier.