Father Confessor (J McNee series)

by Russel D. McLean

  I wanted to reach out and smack him. The presumed arrogance. The idea that “people like him” don’t go to prison. Twenty-first century arseholes like Keller still cling desperately to Victorian ideas of class. For a supposedly classless and modern society, we still breed morons who presume privilege and right above others just because of the family and wealth they were born to.

  I said, “So you went along with what he wanted because he had dirt on you?”

  Keller said, “Yes.”

  All it took was the threat of violence to get a man like this to do whatever you want. I’d read the interviews in the papers, seen him sometimes on the TV, and he always spoke with such presumed authority about the moral backbone of society. When Cameron proposed “the big society” after his Conservative/Liberal coalition took power, Keller had been omnipresent across the local media saying that, finally, we had a Government who would “give responsibility back to the people.” I’d not been convinced then. Liked what he stood for even less now.

  Ernie used to tell me, “the only thing worse than a criminal of any kind is a hypocrite.”

  He was right. Looking at the prime example sitting across from me, I wanted to grab Keller, tell him how he was a fucking disgrace. His spineless fear and lack of anything approaching dignity had cost so many lives. And that one in particular mattered to me. Directly or not, he was responsible for the death of a man I had respected.

  And loved.

  But I held in the anger. Squashed it. Sat there silently.

  Not moving a muscle. Because, unlike Keller, I had principles.

  Of morality.

  Of professionalism.

  And even if this case was purely personal, something that wasn’t going to wind up pleasing my bank manager or gaining me any kind of reference, I had to treat it like any other. Because hypocrisy would not be tolerated.

  So I forced myself to sit back. I was going to let the facts deal with themselves. I was going to remain detached.

  Like the good, professional investigator I’d always claimed to be.

  The truth takes care of itself. In the job, you just have to accept that and deal with whatever ugliness emerges in the fallout.

  I said, “You were scared? Wood’s threats got to you?”

  “I thought about standing up to him,” Keller said.

  “Before you think the worst of me. I did. Truly. The things he asked me to do, I realised most of them were fronts or covers for other activities. While I wasn’t doing anything worse than showing unexpected favouritism or perhaps occasionally pushing for one sponsor over another, that kind of thing, I realised I was contributing to some terrible things. Worse than anything I’d done before.”

  I resisted the urge to make some kind of accusation.

  “But these things never affected people you knew personally.”

  He tried to hide it. But I saw the twitch. He had to have accused himself of all these things and worse over the years. Here, away from TV cameras and press junkets, he was a man who had made bad choices. Maybe he felt the relief of not having to hide what he’d done. I was giving him the chance to unload all his guilt on someone who wanted to listen.

  A priest. Or a psychiatrist. Whichever, sometimes the investigator has to play both roles. Aye, pick your poison.

  But his confession wouldn’t be about absolution. He knew that. I couldn’t forgive him. I don’t know that there’s anyone who could. But by unloading his guilty secrets, he might be able to find some peace when he was alone with nothing but his memories.

  He said, “I did think about it. I had it all planned out what I was going to say. I was going to come home, call him and arrange a meeting. I had the location all planned out. I had a script. I’d spend most of my day locked in the office at HQ, ostensibly working on campaign funding but what I’d been doing was finding the words, the threats, I wanted to make. It would have been good, too.” He smiled; an oddly gentle smile, like a person might find flickering across their faces when they remember a particularly stupid incident from their childhood. One that, at the time, had been mortifying, but now seemed like the gentle folly of youth.

  Because in the end, he did nothing. His grand gesture to escape from the mire of corruption never materialised.

  The way Keller told it, he’d been getting antsy for months about some of the things he was doing for his new friend. All the same, he admitted to me that he’d forced himself to remained wilfully ignorant of what was the obvious truth. “But who wouldn’t? We were all in it, to one degree or another.”

  He dropped the name of another politician, this one a little older, who’d gone on to the national stage, become something of a personality in the world of politics. Told me about some of the man’s dodgy deals, how nothing had ever really stuck to him. “The world of MPs’ expenses,” Keller said, and if he hadn’t been so nervous, he might even have laughed, “is that storm in the teacup you keep hearing about. I mean, it’s the equivalent of bloody Al Capone being taken down for tax evasion.”

  I nodded. Let Keller keep talking. About the day he finally tried to stand up to Kevin Wood.

  He’d spent most of the day psyching himself for the deed. Had it all planned.

  He would make the call from a box at the end of the road. Back then, it was not too hard to find a phone box. These days, the few in the city centre are rarely used and in the west end these days, there’s one of the old red designs at the end of Forest Park Road that’s become more a modern art installation than anything useful.

  “I didn’t even think about the car at the end of the road. Just ignored it. Back then we were on our way up, you know. Top floor flat at the end of a row of tenements that had become nicely middle class. Everyone had cars. It wasn’t unusual.” Except this one didn’t belong to anyone on his street and it was only later he’d realise the make and model was well out of reach of any of his neighbours’ annual incomes. “When I walked in, the wife called me through to the living room. I thought she just wanted to say hello. I walked in, found her sitting there drinking tea with Wood.”

  “Did she know about him?”

  “Know what?”

  “Who he really was. What he was all about.”

  Keller shook his head. “He was nothing more than a cop to her. A friend of mine. One of those contacts I’d made when I was out electioneering. She had no idea...” He looked at me, and there was this sudden pleading in his face. “She still doesn’t.”

  I wondered where his wife was this evening. I figured she had to be out, couldn’t be upstairs and asleep. She’d have been woken by now. But our time together was running out. I let Keller talk.

  “He was there, grinning that grin that I guess she found reassuring. She said how nice it was of him to pop round, and he did this whole bloody act like, aw I feel bad this isn’t just a social call but I need to talk to Peter about work.” Keller shook his head at the memory. “Christ, he was a slimy bugger when he wanted to be.”

  “What happened?”

  “We talked in the back room. The one we’d converted into an office where I could do my work at night. Because there are no hours in politics, no real nine-to-fives. You have to understand that, right?”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Keller’s brow creased a little and he looked at me as though it was the first time he’d realised I was in the room. Starting to realise that he didn’t know who or what I really was.

  The minute a subject starts to think about their situation, to have any thought concerning anything other than the answer to your questions, an interview is in danger. It’s when people are relaxed, when they’re not thinking about who they’re talking to or where they are that they open up more. It doesn’t matter whether they think you’re a friend or they just don’t care who’s in the room, the minute they start to think, there’s every chance they’ll just quit jawing and do the stony silence gig on you.

  But Keller’s hesitation lasted only a moment. He wanted to talk. I don’t think
he cared any more. Figured he was a dead man whatever he did.

  He said, “He closed the door. He’d been talking to me in front of the wife like we were old mates, and then he closes the door and he grabs me. He was stronger than he looked. Shoved me against the wall. His hands on my throat.” As he spoke, Keller probed at his throat with the tips of his fingers as though he could still feel the bruises there.

  Decades later, I thought maybe he did.

  Wood had told Keller that he knew what was going on. That he wasn’t stupid. That Keller needed to get it into his head that there was nowhere he could turn. “If I go down, you’re coming with me. D’you get that? Does that enter into your thick bloody head?”

  All Keller could do was nod.

  Keller, as I’d already figured, was not a strong man. Any ideas he’d had about playing the hero, about turning around an already messed up situation, vanished. He didn’t take well to threats. He was afraid. Afraid of being hurt. Afraid of having to face up to the consequences of his actions.

  Never discount fear as a motivation for criminal behaviour. Some villains can be like spiders in that way. More frightened of you than you are of them.

  Keller spent the next couple of decades in Wood’s pocket. Along the way, he learned more than he ever cared to. What he knew could bring down some of the most powerful men in the Dundee underworld.

  “That’s what your boss wants with me, yeah? I know things have been bad for a while, that him and Wood have had this kind of unofficial truce…”

  “…But the situation’s been building?”

  Keller said, “You could say that, aye. Lately, Wood’s been grabbing up new builds and developments, squeezing competition to make room for his own people. He’s got his finger in a lot of pies.”

  “But there are layers between the man himself and his source of income.”

  “He’s not an idiot.”

  “He’s kept himself clean. You’re one of the few people

  directly involved with illegal activity that I think he’s had

  personal contact with.”

  “He said we had a special relationship.” He almost

  choked on the words.

  “But you never came forward?”

  Keller hung his head. “Because if he went down, so would I.” He licked his lips, as though suddenly dehydrated. “People like me don’t do well in prison.”

  “You said that.” I tried to keep my disgust in check. “So Wood’s been making a grab for more power? That’s why the conflict stepped up between him and…” I jerked my head to the door where Burns had left the room.

  “Wood kept telling me he could take the old git down. Legally, I mean.”

  I shook my head. “David Burns is too good for that.”

  Thinking that if Wood and Burns had ever agreed on anything, then they’d have been unstoppable.

  Keller said, “That’s why you’re on his payroll? Forgive me, but you seem smarter than the average thug.”

  I knew what Keller had taken me for but to hear him say it out loud was a sucker punch that knocked me off my feet. I tried not to let it show, just said, “I need to ask you something.”

  “What, you wanted to know about me and Wood?”

  “Think a man like Burns would come here for your life story?” I played it hard, talking up the tough act. Coming in close so that he backed off. “Someone was killed recently. Murdered. A police detective. Was getting close to Wood. To his… extra-legal activities.”

  That got him. Keller took in a deep breath, sharp enough that it could have sliced his insides. His eyes went wide. He said, “Bright.”

  “He was here?”

  “Asking questions.”

  “What happened?”

  “I answered them.”

  “And?”

  Keller hung his head.

  I just needed the spineless little shite to say what I already knew.

  I waited.

  Just long enough.

  “I called Kevin Wood,” Keller said, and he couldn’t look me in the eye as he spoke. “I didn’t know what –”

  “Spare me,” I said. No more time for pussy-footing around this prick. I let the disgust out. Not enough that I spat on him, but the thought did cross my mind. “Spare me, you prick. You hypocritical little fuck. You knew exactly what would happen.”

  “I didn’t, I –”

  “Fuck you!” I went to the door. It opened before I arrived. Burns walked in. Smiling.

  “My turn,” the old man said to me.

  I stood there. “No,” I said. “No fucking way.”

  Burns said, “Then what do we do with him?”

  “I told you,” I said. “This gets handled the way Ernie would have wanted.”

  Burns shook his head. “Chrissakes,” he said. “You’re a stubborn little bastard, McNee. What if I told you that deep down, your precious DCI Bright knew the truth; that street justice is the only real justice there is. He understood that, you know. Underneath his sanctimonious prick exterior. That’s why we were friends, despite everything. Because he knew and understood same as I do. He just didn’t want to accept it. Deliberately wore the blinkers, maintained the illusion because he was scared of what it might mean to finally admit the truth.” Burns took me by both shoulders, spun me so that we were facing each other.

  In his head, I think he thought it was a fatherly gesture.

  Except this man wasn’t my father. Not even close.

  Burns said, “You’re just the same, McNee.”

  I shrugged him off. Walked over to Keller. “This spineless eejit’s coming down to FHQ. You can stay or you can come with. Either way, he’s going down, and he’s going to talk to someone about what he knows and we’re going to take down Kevin Wood by the letter of the law. We’re going to show him that the law means something.”

  Burns laughed. And then, as though talking to a son he couldn’t help but indulge, he said, “If it takes the cunt out, then we’ll do it your way. But I think Wood’s smarter than you give him credit for. And in case you’ve forgotten, it was a brother in blue who tried to kill you earlier this evening. You tell me who you can trust.”

  I said, “I’ll take the chance.”

  “You’ve either got balls of brass,” Burns said, “or you’re a suicidal bastard.”

  “Well?”

  He studied me for a moment. “I’m still not sure.”

  “We move now,” I said. “Wood’s already in motion; he’s got to realise something’s up. Sooner or later, he’ll figure that we’ve got to Keller.”

  “My lad’ll do the driving,” Burns said.

  The muscle grabbed Keller roughly. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to play it that way, that Keller was coming willingly. But given some of the admissions I’d heard this evening, I figured Keller might just deserve a little rough treatment.

  Burns said, “I have some other business to take care of.” He looked to his associate. “I can drive myself.” Then, to me: “I think its something you need to be involved in.”

  “No,” I said. “I need to be there when –”

  “This isn’t a double-cross or any other kind of shite,”

  Burns said. “I’m a man of my word.” He believed it, too. And in a way he was right. David Burns was a man of his word. When it suited him to be so.

  I hesitated.

  He said, “You want to see this through to the end? Be the hero?”

  I didn’t know where to go.

  Burns said, “There’s one more link, you know.”

  “Aye?”

  “The trigger man.”

  “You know who he was?”

  Burns raised his eyebrows. An intimate gesture that somehow became a challenge at the same time.

  Did I have a choice?

  We walked outside. All of us. The muscle leading Keller to the garage. Burns and I stood just outside the porch and watched in silence. Burns sparking up. He didn’t offer me any this time. In the cool o
f the early morning air, I could have done with a little warmth

  I heard the doors slam, a couple of seconds later the choke of an engine starting.

  And then…

  There was a jolt in the pit of my stomach, the kind you get when a rollercoaster topples over the edge of that long drop.

  I don’t remember anything like a punch or a sudden pressure pushing me forward. All I knew was the drop. The sensation of weightlessness. My ears popped so that for a moment all I could hear was a dull roar. It seemed to come from far away, maybe even across the other side of the city.

  Then I hit the ground. The grass was damp between my fingers. The shockwave took a moment to vibrate from my arse up. Not painful so much as dull.

  I watched the flames belch from the garage and the black smoke plume out in a kind of beautiful and terrifying choreographed movement. My eyes were drawn to the bright flame against the dark of the background, and the choking thickness of that smoke that seemed darker than anything else the evening had to offer.

  I felt as though I’d been flung through water, plunging down and slowing as I went deeper, ready for the inevitable rise back to the surface.

  When I broke it, the real world intruded with the intensity of a lightning bolt.

  It started with the noise. I was suddenly all too aware of the crackling and burning from the garage, and the black smoke started to spread out, to chase me down, try and force its way in through my mouth and nose, soot and particles gagging up my nose and throat.

  I felt the agony in my back from where I’d landed wrong, the pain in my wrist where I’d taken pressure from the fall.

  I turned my head and saw David Burns next to me. He was laid out on his stomach, as though he’d had the presence of mind to turn away from the blast when it happened. Maybe he had, at that. David Burns was no stranger to sneak attacks.

  In the mid-80s, he’d been sent letter bombs. Ostensibly the work of an IRA contact he’d burned bad on an arms deal. Of course, the culprit was never formally identified or caught and there never was any evidential connection between David Burns and any terrorist organisation, Irish or otherwise.