Father Confessor (J McNee series)

by Russel D. McLean

  I had my central arguments planned, topics laid out and research sitting in folders. But I couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand. Found myself flicking between open windows on the computer, reading and re-reading the same material.

  Finding none of it connected in my brain.

  Like I was merely scrolling through word-soup.

  At half-ten, Susan came up to the office, dressed in jeans and a baggy jumper of mine that she’d recently adopted. It looked good on her. Better than it ever had on me, anyway.

  She said, “You called?”

  I made her a coffee.

  We didn’t say much.

  She sat in my leather-backed swivel chair and nursed her mug. Finally: “It sounded important. The reason you called.”

  “It was,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Making this about me. For turning your father’s death into…” I let the sentence hang there.

  She nodded. “He meant a lot to you. In spite of everything. And… you know that you meant a lot to him. At least, you did…”

  I said, “He was your father.”

  Susan sipped at her coffee. Tentative. She let a little pass her lips, winced, and blew on the milky surface of the liquid. I said, “What I’m saying is, if you need anything, I’m here.”

  “We’ve been here before. Where you say you’re going to stay out of something that doesn’t concern you and then you dive right back in.”

  “People change.”

  “Not compulsives.” She said it with a smile. Like a joke. Delivered in earnest. “What I’m saying Steed, is that if I need you, I’ll yell. From the rooftops.” She put the barely touched mug back down on the desk. “But I know you. You need to feel like you’re doing something. And if you need to poke around and get that out of your system I’m fine with that.” She walked over to me, and kissed me quickly on the lips. It was a brief and fleeting touch, the kind of sensation where, when you think back on it, you’re not sure if you really experienced it.

  When she left, I stood there for a long time, thinking about what she had said.

  Then I went back to the computer, closed down the files I had open. Dug into a password-protected folder.

  ErnieBright.odf

  I double-clicked. Looked over what I had.

  Thinking, this was what I had to offer.

  This was who I was.

  SIX

  Susan was back at the flat. When I walked in, she was lying on the sofa, reading a paperback. I checked the cover. Choke Hold. Looked lurid.

  She noticed me, smiled, marked her place and put the book down. Said, “That kid in Waterstones who does the crime books recommended it.”

  “Any good?”

  She grinned. But it was false. I wondered if she’d even noticed what she was reading. These days, it seemed everything Susan did was displacement activity.

  I understood.

  Empathised.

  Didn’t know what the hell to do.

  Susan left the room. I heard taps running, the kettle boiling.

  I waited for her to come back.

  When she returned, I noticed how tired she was looking. Pale and unwell. Her eyes were puffy and her skin was near-porcelain in colour. I walked over, put my arms around her.

  She squeezed back, but it was perfunctory and she stepped away after a few moments.

  I thought about the last few months.

  How we were closer. And yet further apart; our relationship like an Escher painting.

  Susan sat on the sofa. I remained standing.

  She said, “They want me in again, tomorrow. Professional standards.”

  “Did they say if they were any closer to a decision?”

  She shook her head. “Ask me, Dad’s death only makes it look worse.”

  “It’s a separate incident.”

  “Come on, Steed!” she said. “You’re not naïve. You know how this works as well as anyone.”

  People used to ask me about when I left the force, Did you jump? Or were you pushed?

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? Go and talk to them.”

  I sat down on the armchair opposite Susan. Looked at her. She told me she’d made an appointment to see someone, a counsellor. But she hadn’t gone. Another talk we’d never had. There were a lot of them. Things that needed to be said. The problem was, neither of us had the nerve to bring the subject up first.

  I said, “Does the name Raymond Grant mean anything to you?”

  She creased her brow. I couldn’t work out if she was thinking about the answer to the question or trying to work out why I’d even asked it in the first place. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Then you know him?” Without thinking, I’d gone into interrogation mode, no longer talking to her as a friend or a lover but more like a source.

  “Yes,” she said. Was there a catch in her voice? An irritation?

  “He… he worked with Dad when he first transferred to CID in the eighties.”

  That was when it clicked.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I shook my head. No sense saying anything yet. Until I knew more. Until I understood more.

  Susan got to her feet. She came over, stood above me, then leaned down and kissed me gently.

  Held the gesture.

  Reached down and took my hands. Guided them. I wanted to say something.

  Knew what she was doing was displacement.

  But I let her take control.

  It was all I knew how to do.

  ###

  Later, Susan slept beside me.

  It was past three in the afternoon.

  I heard a buzzing from the floor. Rolled over and reached down to my jeans to pull out the mobile.

  A text.

  Unexpected.

  I slipped out without waking Susan.

  Knowing that I couldn’t explain where I was going.

  Not today.

  ###

  Rachel was sitting at one of the window seats in Drouthy’s, soda water and lime on the table in front of her.

  I ordered myself a Coke from the bar, sat across from her.

  We didn’t say anything for a few moments.

  I could see in her face that this was more than a social call. Every time we met like this, I felt a shiver run down my spine. She reminded me so much of her sister. Yes, there were differences, but the set of her mouth and the tilt of her jaw always made me think of Elaine.

  For a long time that was why I avoided her. Believing that by not thinking about Elaine and how she had died, I could make the pain go away. Believing that Rachel served as a reminder of things I would prefer to forget. It was stupid, foolish and selfish. But it’s easy to say such things with the detachment of hindsight.

  I would come to realise that sometimes the best way to deal with something is to face it head on. Of course, knowing that and doing something about it are two very different things.

  We hadn’t seen each other in maybe seven months, Rachel and I.

  Nothing personal. Mostly down to business. On her end as much as mine.

  I opened the conversation. “You’re not usually so terse.”

  She didn’t smile.

  “Dad’s ill. Cancer.”

  Tried to find the right words. They didn’t come.

  “He’s known for some time. Hid it from the rest of us. Made Mum swear not to tell.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She sipped at her drink. “He didn’t want you to know.”

  “Why not?”

  “You and he are… on better terms… but, you have to understand…”

  “I do.”

  On better terms.

  Talking her way around the fact her dad had tried to have me arrested following Elaine’s death. Like I killed her deliberately. Orchestrated the crash as petty revenge for an argument we were having.

  The driver of the other car had never been caught.
>
  Meaning the only person Martin Barrow had left to blame was me. It was only a few years ago we had reached anything close to reconciliation. I think he only forgave me because Rachel wanted it. Because I was the only link any of them had left to Elaine.

  I didn’t talk about her. About us. And I’d been avoiding any of her family since Susan and I finally…

  Rachel said, “I thought you needed to know. A while back I said that you were family. I meant it.”

  I sipped at my drink. Watched past Rachel, outside, the people walking by. Students hanging on the steps of Duncan of Jordanstone Art College across the road. The sky was grey, but the air was warm.

  I said, “How’s the Weegie?”

  She grinned. I was talking about her husband. Reformed Glasgow hard man. So he said. I didn’t see any of the tough guy to him, if I was honest. Maybe he felt the patter was his to uphold; a kind of civic pride in the tough, Glaswegian image.

  Then again, one of the things being both a copper and an investigator had taught me was that you should never judge by appearances.

  “Last time he was in the city, mind,” she said, “two bastards lamped him one. He’s taken against the place.”

  “So he’s never coming back?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  The silence hung between us.

  What did we have in common without her sister?

  Even when Elaine had been alive, I had never felt truly at home with the Barrows, even though they did their best to welcome me. But I think we both knew that I’d rather have been anywhere but at family gatherings. I wasn’t a family man. Would never be.

  Rachel said, “I shouldn’t have called.”

  “No,” I said. “Please… I just… there’s some shite happening and…”

  She smiled. “Same old McNee,” she said. “Burying yourself in your work. In other people’s problems. Avoiding the responsibility of having a life of your own.”

  I held up my hands in mock surrender.

  She kept smiling.

  SEVEN

  Raymond Grant.

  It had been years since anyone on the force last talked to him.

  Decades since he and Ernie had been friends.

  Grant, after all, was a corrupt cop. Who the hell wants to associate with a corrupt cop? Or, at least, one who’s been outed.

  I remember Ernie mentioned his name once or twice. The same way you might talk about a cancer, with that barely restrained hate tripping off the word.

  I would have figured that to be the reason he and Ernie quit their friendship. Except for the fact that the morning after Ernie’s death, the papers were trumpeting:

  DEAD POLICE DETECTIVE: CORRUPTION ANGLE?

  Fast work, especially for the local hacks. I figured at least one of them had a source on the inside. Whatever, the new Chief Inspector would be throwing a fit over that one. Part of her pledge when she took on the job was an assurance that all coppers on the Tayside payroll were above reproach.

  No matter how you spun the situation, it was going to look bad. For the force. For her pledge.

  It was early morning when I drove across town, heading for the estate where Raymond Grant had lived for the last six years. I was turning off Lochee Road when the mobile rang. I took the call through the hands-free.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Lindsay.

  “Working.”

  “Aye, at what?”

  “I don’t have to give you my itinerary.”

  “Correct me if I’m being a cunt,” he said, “but you look like you’re heading for Raymond Grant’s place.”

  I checked the rear-view.

  Recognised the monkey behind the wheel of the unmarked that was running up my arse.

  Could have run myself off the road right then.

  ###

  We stopped off at a nondescript café. Other than some scattered OAPs who probably lived at their tables, we were the only people in so early.

  The old woman behind the till didn’t look too happy to have customers actually sitting in. Probably figuring it meant dirty dishes and more work for her.

  She also didn’t appreciate at least one of us being a copper.

  Lindsay would never have made a candidate for undercover. Had the police vibe all too easy, rolling off him in waves. You’d need to be blind not to see him for what he was.

  He ordered at the counter, got a scowl for his trouble. Came back with two coffees and two limp-looking bacon rolls.

  “They’ll set you up for the day,” he said. “Or else they’ll kill you.”

  “Nothing like gambling your life on breakfast,” I said.

  “The joy of traditional Scottish cuisine,” he said, dousing his bacon with tomato sauce from an unmarked red squeezy-bottle. I figured he’d be lucky to taste the meat beneath that. Then again, maybe that was the idea. I watched my own roll. Wary of signs of life. And grabbed the bottle from Lindsay when he was done.

  Lindsay said, “You want to tell me what you want with the corrupt old bawbag?”

  “Susan remembers Raymond. He used to be close with Ernie. And then one day he just stopped coming round.”

  Lindsay nodded. “Probably when he got found out.”

  “She reckons before that,” I said.

  Lindsay sipped at his coffee. Made a face. “Put fuckin’ hairs on your chest,” he said, then looked over my shoulder at the woman behind the counter and gave his best smile. The one that made him look like a shark at feeding time.

  He turned his attention back to me. “You didn’t blink when I said you were going to Grant’s.”

  “I have my sources.”

  “This was being kept internal.”

  “Why are you on this and not D&C?”

  That got him. He hesitated. Told me a lot. Lindsay never hesitated. Never doubted himself. “D&C are looking for a corrupt cop. You and I both know…” he hesitated again, and I realised it wasn’t because he was doubting himself but because he was confiding in me. It was choking him to admit anything to me. “Fucksakes, we both bloody well know Ernie was a lot of things. But he wasn’t corrupt.”

  It felt good to hear someone say it. But, did we really know that? I thought about seeing him at Burns’s house. About the doubts I’d harboured over the last year. I said, “You think you know someone. But…”

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking well dare, you wee shite,” he said, leaning over the table, jabbing one of those overly-long fingers in my direction.Keeping his tone low, close to a whisper.

  I said, “I want to believe he’s innocent. I do. But –”

  “– But what?”

  I hesitated. If I told him what I knew, I was shitting on Ernie’s memory. But if Lindsay was going to conduct anything close to an effective investigation, he needed to know everything.

  He’d have said the same thing, too, if the tables were turned.

  “But we have to be open to the possibility that he was involved in something.”

  Lindsay shook his head and sat back again. He said, “Tell me why you’re not with your wee girlfriend right now?”

  “I can’t leave this one alone.”

  “Why not?”

  “You once told me that Ernie was disappointed in me. Fine. I accepted that a long time ago. But I didn’t stop thinking of him as my friend or my mentor.” I had to tell Lindsay what I knew. Sooner or later it was going to come out. He had to know everything “But some things have made me start to doubt what I thought I knew.”

  “Such as?”

  I took a breath. “Last year,” I said. “I saw him at Burns’s house. Not there on business. A guest of the family. He was there, drinking wine in the back yard.”

  Lindsay took it better than expected. Maybe he’d just been waiting for me to actually say it. Already knew what I had to tell him, just didn’t want that confirmation. “This is what you didn’t want to say?”

  I licked my lips. My mouth was dry. I wasn’t so sure I wanted t
o drink the coffee, though. I said, my voice cracking, “He was in with Burns, and I didn’t want to believe it. I figured he was playing an angle.”

  “But?”

  “He wasn’t. None that I can see.”

  Lindsay said, “And none that I’ve heard about.” His voice was soft, his tone clipped. Restraining himself. Back when I was on the force, we all knew that it was when Lindsay stopped the bluster and went quiet that you really had to worry.

  “There has to be something,” I said.

  “You want him exonerated?”

  “Aye.”

  “For your peace of mind?”

  “And Susan’s.”

  “Right,” said Lindsay. “Don’t forget the daughter.” He looked about to say something else, but caught himself at the last moment.

  I said, “Okay, so my interest is personal.” No shame in admitting it. No need to cover it up.

  “Personal’s bad,” said Lindsay. “Personal fucks things up.”

  Telling me something I’d already learned the hard way.

  ###

  Raymond Grant’s one-bedroom flat was the bottom floor in a decrepit 1960’s estate. Walkways connected the upper levels. The décor of choice was spray paint and slaggings:

  Josh eats cock.

  Kelly is a lesbo munter.

  Street poetry, you might call it.

  Avant-fucking-garde.

  There was no-one around. A few curtains and blinds twitched.

  People inside probably saw Lindsay, saw copper, and decided it was best to stay inside. Maybe when they saw me, they saw the same thing. It‘s something that never really leaves you. An attitude. A style. Something that screams to the world who you are or what you’ve been.

  Grant’s front door had been hit by the spray-can artists.

  Peedofile

  Twat

  Smelly auld cunt

  Slogans overlapping, intertwining.

  Minimalist. Hardly Banksy-level. But effective in getting their message across.

  Lindsay knocked hard. The copper’s knock. The kind of knock that touches something primitive in the back of your brain, makes you feel guilty even if you’ve done nothing.