Father Confessor (J McNee series)

by Russel D. McLean

  Glasses scribbled furiously.

  Anecdotal detail adds flavour to procedural notes, but you rarely need it. Even then I knew the lad didn’t have the chops for street work. His attitude screamed, Facilitator. Of course, he’d probably go far. Further than me, at any rate.

  “There are some witnesses who cannot be intimidated. Ms Fairweather was one of them. She kept in close contact with the investigating officers. Told us of several attempts that were made to buy her silence. And then she disappeared.” Ernie was trying to keep his tone authoritative, but if you knew the man, you could hear the stresses and cracks in his voice. He’d been one of the investigating officers. A lifetime spent trying to put men like Burns away, and this had brought him so close.

  Was that what sent him over the edge?

  Was there something in my memories of him that I had overlooked? Were there signs that he was not the man I thought he was?

  It’s easy to rewrite memories.

  Refocus them.

  Remember what you want. Add retrospective details. Make sense of your past, even if it is a kind of lie.

  Another click. Crime scene photographs. Stark. Sharp.

  Brutal.

  Check the reactions around.

  From stoic to steeled to stunned.

  A couple even leaning forward, like they needed to see.

  Go into this line of work, there are always ghouls.

  I looked at Glasses. He’d quit scribbling, couldn’t look away.

  Ernie clicked through:

  Another angle.

  Click

  Another.

  Even the ghouls shifted uncomfortably. All of this become real to them. More than just the kind of horrific pictures young men laugh at to prove their masculinity.

  “No-one was ever arrested. Lines of enquiry were followed, but petered out. Men like David Burns pride themselves on working without a trace. They also pride themselves on their ability to bully and intimidate. People are scared of them because they work outside of the law, outside of the rules that ground the police and the authorities. The biggest threat men like David Burns face is from witnesses, from those who trust in the system. Testimony is key if we are to take men like this down. We cannot allow –” click “these –” click “atrocities –” click “to continue.”

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  ###

  In my head, I clicked through images. Same way Ernie had done with the overheads so many years ago to reinforce the power and emotional effect of what none of us had been there to witness.

  My mind filled in the details. Created images I had not seen.

  Click

  Overhead, Ernie on the floor of the warehouse, his body twisted.

  Click

  His eyes. Glassed over.

  Click

  Blood pooling on the concrete floor.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  I knocked hard on the door.

  “Open up, you bastard!”

  Hammering.

  To wake the dead.

  When the door cracked an inch, I followed through with a shoulder shove, the door swinging hard on its hinges and knocking Raymond Grant off his feet. I stormed inside, pulled him up on to his feet and threw him into the living room.

  He stumbled, crashed over the tiny coffee table hidden under a pile of sheets. Maybe they cushioned his fall.

  Pity.

  “What the fuck, man?” His voice was broken, pathetic. He trembled when he spoke.

  I noticed the works near the window. Fresh used. Our visit had rattled him enough he probably didn’t even wait until we’d closed the door behind us to dig out the stash.

  I walked past him, picked up what was left. “Naughty boy, Raymond.”

  “Personal use.” His voice was shaking, the tremor of fear clear and unmistakable.

  I picked up Grant’s works, threw them at him.

  He cowered.

  “You can’t do this. There are rules.” But he didn’t sound sure. I was an unknown quantity to Raymond Grant. That gave me the advantage.

  One I intended to exploit.

  “Aye,” I said. “Last time I was here with a copper. Now, it’s just you and me, you prick.”

  He was crouched on the floor. Like a parody of the Igor character in the old black and white Frankenstein movies; a pathetic, half-formed man cowering in terror and fear.

  Did I feel sorry for him?

  Knowing the things he had done?

  I looked at him cowering.

  Thought about Ernie Bright bleeding out, alone, in a warehouse.

  His life and reputation destroyed.

  And this man knew why.

  This man who had screwed his life every step of the way. Who had thrown himself into the deep end of life and never tried to swim back to the surface.

  I said, “There were others here before us.”

  He nodded.

  “They scared you. Threatened your life.”

  He nodded again.

  I said, “They didn’t lose a friend the other day.”

  Let him think on that.

  He was crying, now. Trying to hold it in. Shivering all over. Hard to tell if it was guilt, fear, or the need for another fix.

  Maybe all three. Like I gave a toss. All I wanted from him was answers.

  Telling myself I wanted them for Susan.

  That I was doing this because it was the only thing I could do to help her, now.

  Aye, check the hero complex. Threatening a pathetic old prick who’s been paying for stupid mistakes his whole life, who must have thought every day about welcoming death. Why else would he be sticking shite in his veins if not to welcome the embrace of the eternal high? Close to death as you can get without actually toppling over the side.

  Some people numb the pain with chemicals.

  Others with anger.

  He stuck a needle in his veins.

  I lashed out.

  Make your choice.

  Looking at him, I suddenly felt a wave of nausea. Not at him, but at myself. For thinking I could come in here and beat the truth out of someone like this.

  No better than the people who’d told him not to talk to the coppers.

  Grant looked up at me. Trembling.

  I said, “Fuck it,” and stepped past him, out into the hall. Opened the front door, found I was blinded by the light outside.

  Heard a voice say, “Wait. You fucking prick, hold it. I’ll tell you about Ernie. About the other bastards. Whatever. The fuck does it matter, anyway? I’m going to die one of these days. Maybe they’d be doing me a bastarding favour.”

  I stopped.

  Turned back from the light outside.

  To talk to the dying man who lived in the dark.

  TEN

  Raymond Grant just wanted to be left alone.

  After his dismissal from the force, he existed on anger. At himself. At the force, who tossed him aside like an unwanted tissue. At the world which he felt owed him something for the sacrifices he had made.

  But he had no focus.

  No drive.

  “Where did I go from there? Christ, how do you pull your life back together after they tell you you’re a disgrace to society? How do you pull yourself up and become a human again when no-one’s willing to give you a bloody chance?”

  He found he had no contacts in the straight world who would speak to him. At least when I left, I did so in a tide of anger, but not of shame. Grant had nothing from his old life that he could turn to.

  And his reputation – a crooked copper – followed him into the jails and beyond.

  He served his sentence, isolated from other prisoners after an incident that resulted in damaged kidneys and hours of emergency surgery just to keep him breathing.

  In prison he learned despair and hopelessness.

  Applied those lessons to the world outside.

  Applied them well.

  Lived
his life in the flat. The walls were the boundaries to his world. He never wanted to venture outside.

  “Used to keep the place clean, you know? Like I still had a life?”

  But he didn’t have one. He couldn’t have one.

  While he was inside, his wife filed for divorce. The one person he thought would never abandon him, “But I was being a fucking eejit. I would have dragged her down with me.” And his daughter, too. “She’ll be twenty-six years old, now. Last time I saw her, she was this tiny wee thing. Big eyes. Big brown eyes that looked up at you and said, ‘Protect me from all the bad people in this world.’”

  I let him talk at his own pace.

  No more threats.

  No more fear.

  Sometimes in this job, you’re less an investigator and more of a psychiatrist. Or a priest. Go about your job the right way, people want to talk to you. Like somehow you’ll be able to forgive them for the things they’ve done.

  For some things, however, I’ve come to realise, there can be no forgiveness. Not from an outside party. The only person who can forgive you, the only person you should confess to is yourself.

  All the bad people in this world.

  Grant was one of those bad people. Or he had become one.

  Maybe he even realised that back then.

  His public fall from grace, when you looked at the facts, was instigated through a series of mistakes that became more and more blatant.

  Like he wanted to be caught.

  Like he wanted to be stopped.

  Guilt is a strange thing. An emotion we don’t always recognise straight away.

  He told me about his fall from grace.

  I listened.

  How his life crumbled.

  I listened.

  He told me how he was not alone, but he was one of the officers targeted because his behaviour was noticed. “Policing changed. Aye, maybe for the better. And you either went with it or you got your bollocks ripped off by the new Disciplines and Complaints bastards.”

  Did he think he could continue to get away with his behaviour?

  “I don’t know, son. I don’t fucking know. Ken, now we’d say it was a mental problem, that I just couldn’t stop the same old fucking behaviour. But I dunno. I dunno.”

  Like I said, some folks thought he wanted to be caught.

  Guilt.

  Fucks us all up in ways we don’t expect.

  I asked him who else was involved. Anyone who was never caught.

  “Y’mean Ernie?”

  “Tell me about him.”

  Grant, his body hunched, his voice stammering, his mind finding it hard to focus for so long, shook his head. “You don’t want to know. I saw what happened earlier when – ”

  “Tell me.”

  “He moved with the times.”

  “And before the times moved?”

  “There was a period where we wound up on the same squad, attached to Serious and Organised.”

  “Targeting David Burns.”

  “Know how we used to deal with the big boys? We let them break the law within limits. Because here’s the truth that this brave, new, politically correct world can’t handle: we’re better off knowing who the criminals are and what they’re doing than letting them slip underground and off the radar. Human nature is fucked, son. Bad people will do bad things. We can’t stop it.”

  I said, “But you can control it.”

  “Aye,” he said. “That’s what we tried to do. On fucking orders, too.”

  I thought about what Ernie had told me about the bad old days when the brass tried to strike deals with men like Burns. How the line had started to blur between copper and criminal, and when the whole operation fell apart, how everything turned to chaos.

  I remembered him telling me how hard it had been to approach Burns as an equal, how it had been equally hard to overturn a carefully nurtured relationship.

  Aye, maybe too hard?

  Grant wasn’t telling me anything about Ernie.

  Like he was afraid it would somehow hurt me.

  As he talked, he periodically pawed at his face with the backs of his hands. His eyes were roadmap-red, and he was having difficulty breathing. Sounding like an asthmatic. In the stifling atmosphere of his flat, I had to wonder about his health, how he kept on going like he did.

  I said, “Tell me about the money. Tell me about why Ernie was diverting money from his accounts to you.”

  He lowered his head. Body trembling. I expected him to start rocking back and forward. Maybe throw in some drool for effect.

  But the trembling was as far as he got before, “Isn’t this cosy?”

  Lindsay.

  Later than expected. I’d been thinking maybe he’d decided to walk away. Either thinking I was full of bluster or thinking I wouldn’t get anywhere coming back to see Grant.

  But I didn’t register my surprise. I didn’t move except to turn my head, see him in the door.

  He stood casual. Screaming smug in his posture and expression. Those lips twisted. He couldn’t smile properly, not something that came naturally to him, but he did a fair enough smirk when he wanted to.

  I said, “Just having a wee chat.”

  “Right,” said Lindsay. He came in, stood beside me. Calm and smiling, his gaze focussed on Grant. “Thing is about my eejit of a friend here,” talking about me, “he forgets the arrangement we made this morning. You know we just want to get to the bottom of what happened to your old partner, aye?”

  Grant was still, now. Transfixed by the DI. A mongoose confronted with a snake.

  Lindsay had something under his arm. He threw it on the coffee table.

  An envelope.

  “Raymond,” he said, “I want you to look at these. Tell me if you recognise anyone.”

  He’d clearly had his own ideas after our chat with Raymond earlier. I wondered where he’d been, what was in the envelope.

  Grant didn’t move. Refused to look at what was in front of him.

  “Raymond,” Lindsay said, in soothingly soft tones, as though talking to a nervous child, “If you don’t look at these photographs in the next thirty seconds, I’ll rip your fucking arms off and beat you to death with them.”

  Raymond got the hint.

  Emptied out the glossies. Looked at them carefully.

  Laid out three so that we could see them.

  “They were the ones came to see me.”

  Lindsay gathered up the images. “I were you, Raymond, I’d maybe think about moving.”

  He touched my shoulder.

  I took the hint. Had seen the photographs and realised their significance. Realised Grant had given us all he could.

  The poor, washed-up old bastard.

  ELEVEN

  Down the road, we walked into a public park. Sat on a bench that was shaded by a pathetic old tree whose branches were bare, skeletal.

  The wind came in from the Tay.

  Cold.

  Made me shiver.

  I spoke first. “They’re coppers.”

  Lindsay said, “You recognise any of them?”

  “Seen at least one of them around FHQ,” I said. “Not enough to speak to. They’re all young. Joined after I left, maybe.”

  “This whole case is a fucking disaster. I had a feeling about it since this morning. When there’s one rotten apple, it usually spreads through the barrel.”

  “We don’t know –”

  “We know that someone’s rotten, McNee. I know you think me and Ernie didn’t get on well, that I’d be fucking happy to see the pain-in-the-arse get posthumously sent down for shite he might have tried to hide in real life. But the fact is I really don’t want him to be dirty.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s face it, though: some fucker’s bent. Someone set him up at the very least, and to do that they need connections on the force.”

  I was feeling tired. Limbs heavy. Just wanted to go home, hide under the sheets and forget everything.

  But it was too late. I couldn’t bac
k out. For my own sanity as much as anything.

  “I’m not a paranoid prick like you,” Lindsay said. “I don’t see conspiracies around every corner. But this morning, we both knew that Grant was scared of someone, that we weren’t the first bastards to approach him about Ernie. Maybe he’s been scared for a long time. Whatever story he had ready for us about how Ernie gave him that money, I think it was bollocks. I think someone’s been setting this up for a long time and they knew we’d follow the trail, make the connection between Ernie the veteran bastard detective found with all that cocaine and his doped-up junkie tosspot ex-colleague.”

  I was thinking, Burns.

  Lindsay told me what he’d figured, “You were going back to talk to him. Fine, gave me a chance to do some thinking. One of my instructors at the college works for Discipline and Complaints. Owes me a favour or two.”

  “That’s where you got the pictures?”

  “I won’t tell you what the bloody price was.”

  “I won’t ask.”

  “Thing is, McNee, this is going to get big. If Ernie was mixed up with those bastards, this is serious shite. There’s a major investigation in the works. One of the reasons the old man gave me access to those files. If we can bring one of these boys in, maybe D&C can squeeze them. Make a deal.” He made a face, then, and spat on the ground. “The squirmy cunts they are.”

  ###

  Grant had picked out three faces from the array. Constables. None of them veterans. Which was why they stood out. I’d been expecting long-serving officers, but what I got were fresh faces.

  They were nothing more than foot-soldiers. Errand boys.

  But they were a start.

  The first looked like he could barely shave; a roundfaced lad named Cal Anderson. Anderson had already been marked as a potential trouble-maker. Despite that smooth skin and baby-round face, he had been cited several times for excessive force and for the sloppy, inconsistent quality of his arrest sheets.

  The second was the spit of the Pillsbury Dough-Boy. Robin Reed didn’t have as thick as a jacket as Anderson, but he was being looked at for social connections. He’d grown up in one of the city’s more colourful areas, and most of his schoolyard contemporaries had gone on to work for the likes of David Burns. Reed had kept his nose clean, but there were questions being raised concerning his arrest rate and the number of convictions that had fallen through in his name.