Father Confessor (J McNee series)

by Russel D. McLean

  I hung back. Acting like I was grateful to be along for the ride. Guess I was, in my way.

  “In the end,” he’d told me, before we left the café, “I’d rather have you where I can see you.”

  Whenever Lindsay turned his back, I fought the urge to fire off the finger. Old habits die hard.

  We waited for an answer.

  Lindsay knocked again.

  Finally, the door opened a few inches. Cautious. A face peered round the crack. Maybe only a quarter visible, but enough to see the tired, leathery skin, the watery, bloodshot eyes and the greying stubble of a face that hadn’t seen a good razor in a long time.

  Lindsay said, “Raymond Grant?”

  “The fuck wants to know?”

  Lindsay held up his ID.

  Raymond Grant said, “Jesus Shite,” and opened the door all the way.

  EIGHT

  Grant led us into his living room. We would have sat down but for the washing that lay scattered across the sofas and chairs. Grant shoved some onto the floor so he could flop into a tired, beige armchair. His heating was up full blast, four bars of the gas firing red.

  I looked at Lindsay.

  He was sweating hard. Didn’t make a move to loosen his tie.

  Grant said, “What do yous want?”

  Lindsay said, “Time was, you were a copper.”

  “Aye,” said Grant. “You could say that.”

  “Hard fall.”

  “You come round here to gloat?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Grant belched, loudly. Didn’t even have the decency to look proud. Just sank deeper into the chair. There were old stains on his trousers. When did he last put on new clothes? Just how long had all this laundry been lying around the flat?

  There was a smell of damp. Mildew.

  And another faint scent underneath that stung the back of my nose and crept down my throat with malicious intent.

  Lindsay said, “Do you read the papers?”

  “Fuck would I want to do that for?”

  “Friend of yours died yesterday.”

  For the first time, Grant looked away from Lindsay and at me. “Who’s he? Where’s his ID?”

  “My friend here is consulting on the case, privately.”

  “Get to fuck.”

  Lindsay moved fast. Down, grabbing at Grant’s collar, pulling the old man up and out of his chair as though he weighed nothing. Given his near skeletal frame, maybe that was true. Lindsay got his face right in the other man’s, kept his voice low, controlled, righteous. “Listen to me, you sack of shite, I don’t have to be fucking nice to you about this, because this friend of yours who died, he was a copper. You get that?” He pushed Grant away again. The old man stumbled, crashed back into the chair.

  I hung back near the door. Trying to appear disinterested.

  Wondering if maybe Lindsay had brought me along for appearance as much as to keep an eye on me.

  Who said the coppers don’t use the same tricks as the criminals?

  I wondered if Burns’s goons felt any conflict about the things they saw. If they had any kind of conscience.

  Grant sputtered a few times after landing back in the chair, finally, said, “Jesus fuck, man, okay, okay! You’re talking about Ernie. Aye, I fuckin’ remember him, so why’re you here?”

  I figured I was done playing the strong, silent type. Stepped forward. “Checked your bank account recently?”

  He flinched. As though from a slap.

  Lindsay wasn’t prepared to give up the lead: “We know about the cash. So tell me, why was he paying you money, you wee prick?”

  Grant shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, no.”

  I slipped into the background again. Grant kept looking past Lindsay to me, unable to work out who I was and what I was doing here. Maybe the years off the force had begun to have an effect; my attitude no longer saying “copper” in the way I believed it did.

  “Hoy,” Lindsay said, “Bugger-lugs!” Got Grant’s attention. “Don’t look at him. He’s no interest to you. I’m the only bastard you want to be focussed on, aye?”

  Grant said, “Need a smoke.”

  “I give you one, you going to talk?”

  Grant nodded.

  Lindsay turned to me. “Well,” he said. “Give the man a bloody ciggie.”

  I took a pack out of my inside pocket. I’d quit a few years back, but one of the tricks of the trade is to always have something you can barter with. Two things you can always use to get people talking: cigarettes and alcohol. Like the old Primal Scream song.

  I tossed one to Grant. He caught it with the accuracy of desperation. He fumbled in his pockets for a lighter.

  If you’re a smoker, the truth is that the craving never really goes away. Most ex-smokers I know have either got uptight about the whole affair or replaced it with something else. I found that occasionally reminding myself of the reasons I should quit tended to work. And men like Grant were living examples: the shakes, the sunken eyes, the rotted, yellow teeth.

  Not all attributable to the cancer sticks, of course.

  But it felt good to tell myself that they were.

  As he sparked up, Grant’s sleeves shifted a little and I caught a glimpse of his stick-like arms, the exposed tracks both old and new. His flesh a veritable pin-cushion. Raymond Grant didn’t strike me as the type to go in for acupuncture.

  Grant moved to the window. Old wooden frame, single glazing. Looked as if a good breeze would blow them in.

  He said, “It should have been him.”

  “What should have been who?”

  “Bright. It should have been that bastard got his arse handed to him. But he was too good.”

  Lindsay said, “Listen to me, you little toerag, I’ve had enough crap today. And you’re talking about a friend of mine. A colleague.”

  “Aye, whatever,” said Grant. He blew smoke out in an unsteady plume. “Hit me if you like. Doesn’t change anything.”

  Lindsay said, “Why was he paying money into your account?”

  Grant hesitated. “We were old friends,” he said. “I mean, he was helping me, aye? Get back on my feet.”

  “Balls,” Lindsay said.

  Grant looked at me.

  Lindsay said, “Keep your eyes on me, big man!”

  Grant dropped his cigarette on the bare floorboards. “What do you want?” he said. “Does it bloody matter what I tell you?”

  “I want the truth.”

  Grant was shaking. It could have been the drugs. How long since his last fix? He was jonesing, maybe. It was a sad thing to see. From what I knew, Grant had once been considered a good policeman, a rising star. He and Ernie had worked well together, and on the rare occasions Ernie had mentioned Grant, his voice had been tinged with a kind of sadness; a regret at a life wasted.

  Where had he fallen? Had it been one long fall or hundreds of tiny stumbles that led him to this shitty little flat, bumming cigarettes off men who hated him, trying to pretend no-one could see the pockmarks on his skin or the glaze on his eyeballs.

  Grant leaned against the windowsill to stop his trembling. He said, “I don’t have to say anything to you. I don’t have to tell you anything.” He held out his hands, wrists up. “You want to arrest me, aye fine, go ahead. But I’ve said all I’ll say to yous. Do you have a fucking charge?”

  It would have been easy to put the aggression he’d displayed throughout our little chat down to drug use. But there was something else, I was sure. A deeper motivation, something we just couldn’t see yet. He didn’t want to answer our questions.

  Because he was afraid.

  Not of us.

  But of something else. Or someone else.

  ###

  Outside, I said, “He knew we were coming.”

  “Bloody right he did, the arsehole. But he had a point. We can’t just arrest the bastard on a gut feeling. What he said earlier, that Ernie was giving him money out of some kind of bastarding good-Samaritan
guilt complex, it’s something we can’t disprove. Not right now. But I feel it in my gut, that there’s something he’s holding out on us.”

  Feel it in my gut.

  Gut feelings had seen friends hurt and nearly got me killed.

  Gut feelings had made me shoot one man in cold blood and wind up covering up the murder of another.

  And here I was, again, like Lindsay, trusting that twisting sensation in my stomach that told me, something’s wrong.

  I said, “You saw his reaction when we pressed about the money. He panicked. Might have been the drugs, but I don’t think he was high. Not today.”

  “I’ll not deny that one.”

  Jesus, Lindsay was going to make me work for it like a newly minted detective on fucking probation. And he was going to enjoy it, too.

  “He knew we were coming.”

  “Maybe the washed-up prick just doesn’t like dealing with coppers,” said Lindsay. “Understandable given what he –”

  “No,” I said, as we reached the car. “That wasn’t what it was about. He didn’t want to talk about Ernie. He didn’t want to talk about his past. He didn’t want to talk about the money. Somebody got to him. Somebody told him to keep schtum. He’d rather we arrested him than he talked.”

  “Aye, you’ve got a point,” said Lindsay, walking to the driver’s side. “Somebody gave him a real bastarding shite of a fright. There was blood on his shirt, too.” He grinned at me. “Use your eyes, McNee, you might make a detective one day.”

  He unlocked the car. Stopped just before opening the door, looking as thought he’d just seen something at his feet. “Oh, get to piss!”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Some wee bawbag’s taken my fucking hubcaps.”

  I did my best not to look too happy.

  NINE

  I climbed in my own car, parked just behind Lindsay, hit the radio.

  Whisky in the Jar-O

  Made me think about Martin Barrow, Elaine’s father. He’d been a Thin Lizzy guy, I remembered. Christ, I was thinking about him in the past tense. As though he was already dead and gone.

  I’d got the feeling, when talking to Rachel, that she was having the same thoughts, feeling as guilty about them as anyone. But it was only natural that she was preparing herself for the worst. At least she had the time to prepare, to accept what was happening.

  Time was, I might have envied Martin in a strange way. For a long time after Elaine’s death, I had become wrapped up in my own feelings, completely selfish and absorbed with my pain. Unable to rationalise it, I had started looking for ways out, ways to end everything. The word suicide never crossed my mind. But the way I acted, that’s what I was considering, what I was looking for.

  I had Martin’s number in my phone.

  While we’d never be best friends, we had started talking again. Forcing ourselves past old grudges and anger.

  All I needed to do was press a few buttons. Say a couple of words.

  I’m no believer in the afterlife, but if Elaine had been watching, she would have appreciated that. She used to tell me, “You don’t have to like people, but you could at least try.” Saying it like a half-joke, but always serious beneath the smile.

  I could have dialled the numbers. Could even have made the promise that I would do so later. But instead I switched stations and put Martin Barrow out of my mind.

  Telling myself I had more pressing matters to consider.

  Like Ernie Bright.

  And Raymond Grant.

  Someone had got to him. Lindsay and I had seen the same things. Whoever it was, they’d got Grant to clam up on what he knew about why cash had been flowing from Ernie’s account into his.

  The way he acted, we figured he was more scared of them than of us. And why wouldn’t he be?

  We were coppers, after all. Or at least one of us was. There were rules we had to follow, boundaries we couldn’t cross. All the bluster and bluff in the world couldn’t change that.

  I had to wonder why someone would lead us to Grant and then scare him into not talking about what was plainly obvious; a trail of breadcrumbs left out in the open air. Of course his denial looked like he was hiding something, maybe even trying to protect Ernie.

  Was I reaching out in desperation? Seeing conspiracies because I wanted, more than anything, for Ernie to have been the man I once believed him to be. All the evidence pointed to a dark truth, to a copper who had gone over the edge, but I had to cling on to the belief that someone wanted Ernie’s death to look that way, to distract from the truth.

  Paranoia?

  Was I looking for vindication?

  Or merely praying?

  Rain spattered down. Dundee weather: temperamental at best. Sometimes I thought the city could shift the atmosphere on its own; as though they were indicative of a shifting mood. Which made Dundee as close as you could get to being a depressive; periods of unrivalled sunshine followed by unexpected and sudden bouts of downpour and dull.

  The rhythm soothed me.

  I had my hand on the keys, but I wasn’t turning.

  Who had got to Grant before us?

  What were they hiding?

  Was I so wrong about Ernie?

  I closed my eyes, let my head fall back against the rest.

  Who had got to Grant before us?

  If they had got to Grant, then who else – ?

  Sodit. We’d just walked away, like good coppers, because we knew we were beaten, that our rules prevented us from doing what had to be done.

  But I’d seen the way that Grant looked at me. Edgy and uncertain. Not sure who I was. Certain I wasn’t a copper like Lindsay.

  Wondering if I had to play by the same rules.

  I dialled in a number on the phone.

  “What?”

  “Give me ten minutes,” I said. “Then I want you back at Grant’s place.”

  “Christ, McNee, leave this shite to the professionals.”

  “You want him to talk as much as I do,” I said. “You’re the one who said you’d rather have me working with you. And you know I can do things you can’t, walk places you’re shut out from.”

  “You can’t touch him,” Lindsay said. “You even give the bastard a scratch, I’ll have you down for assault before you take another breath.”

  I said, “Just trust me.”

  Lindsay didn’t say anything. Just killed the call. I took that to be a “yes”.

  ###

  Briefing room.

  Early morning.

  Years ago.

  Seeing the memory from a distance. As though it belongs to someone else.

  Maybe twenty of us, wired on early morning caffeine and lack of sleep. A few hangovers. Easy to tell who was a candidate for hard-core alcoholism.

  I was in the third row, still a plod, maybe six months away from transfer and hopefully promotion. CID was the goal. The dream. The ideal. The reason I’d joined up in the first place. It was ten months before Elaine’s death. A year and one month before I’d break DI Lindsay’s nose and finally quit the force.

  Looking back, I realise how unlikely it seemed, how no-one could predict any of what happened.

  The world only ever makes sense in hindsight.

  In my memories, I am young. Little more than a kid, really. If you ask me what I look like, I’d say I look the same as I did at nineteen. I think I’m grown up. Back then, I knew nothing about the world. I just thought I did.

  Ernie Bright was up front. Standing before a projection screen.

  Talking Serious and Organised.

  Talking witnesses.

  Talking David Burns.

  “The problem is not that we don’t know what he’s doing, it’s that we can’t link him to any of the shite that happens in his name.”

  Beside me, a guy who wears glasses and looks out of place in uniform makes copious notes. I don’t know his name, but figure he’s shooting for promotion and desk.

  There are two types of coppers, or so I believed
.

  Those who want to get their hands dirty.

  And those who want to let others do the hard graft.

  Glasses was one of the latter.

  And that was fine. Every organisation needs someone standing back from the field, directing the plays. As long as they can appreciate the realities of what that means for the front line grafters.

  “The few witnesses we’ve ever had have failed to provide conviction. For a variety of reasons.” Ernie clicked through to an image of an older man wearing Mr Magoo frames. He was frail, as though he’d get blown away by an early morning breeze. “This man came forward with a promise to link Burns to drug trades out in the Lochee area, and a whole network linking back to Eastern Europe. At the last moment, he had a change of heart, said he’d made a mistake. He was willing to serve time for perjury. Nothing we did could make him change his mind.” Ernie stopped there. He looked at each one of us, as though we could answer the question he was about to ask. “What happened?” Another pause. We all knew the answer, but we let Ernie say it out loud. “He was more scared of what Burns and his boys would do than he was of jail time. Because he knew that we operate within certain guidelines. We can only intimidate up to a point. And while we hear stories about coppers crossing the line every time we open a newspaper, the truth is that most criminals – and most members of the public – know such instances are rare.”

  Another click. Another image. A woman, mid-forties with fair hair and the kind of eyes you’d call piercing. Like a bayonet. She had a proud bearing, held her head high and stared right at the camera as though daring it to make something of her.

  “Kate Fairweather. She came forward after one of her sons was killed. The lad worked for Burns – off the books, away from his legitimate public work – and wound up dead for his trouble. Part of a little gang trouble we had in the late nineties, a skirmish that cemented Burns’s dominance in the city. The lad was killed, execution style, a clear message. His mother took it hard, decided that enough was enough. The worst problem with men like Burns – the manipulators, the liars, the users – is that ordinary people don’t see the pain these men cause until it’s too late. Ms Fairweather couldn’t save her son, but she was determined she could save someone else’s. Or at the very least take revenge by helping put the man she held responsible behind bars.”