Father Confessor (J McNee series)

by Russel D. McLean

But I couldn’t do that. After reading the note, I knew there was no time. What I had to do was consider the next move. And not give in to panic.

  There was no reply from Susan’s mobile.

  “This is Susan Bright. I can’t answer right now. Leave a message.”

  I dialled three times, before finally giving up. Trying to think of a new plan.

  The message echoed about my head, as though part of me thought it was important, that there was some clue in her words that was escaping me.

  My head was light, ready to float off my shoulders. My muscles trembled like the temperature had dropped dramatically. But it wasn’t cold. It was adrenaline rush.

  And I couldn’t ignore it. I had to do something.

  What I did was leave the flat, head to the street, to my car.

  Only when I was in the driver’s seat, I hesitated.

  Thinking: Where would she go?

  Under normal circumstances, she might have gone to see someone she trusted. Try and get a new perspective on her feelings. Maybe someone like Lindsay. She used to tell me how he was a good sounding board. That there was no bullshit in his advice.

  I’d always scoffed at that.

  But Lindsay was in the hospital, in a coma, under constant surveillance. From both sides of the law, if I was to believe everything that Burns had told me. He had nothing to give her. No support. No wisdom. Not even a formal dressing down for thinking like an eejit.

  I couldn’t think of anyone else. Except her father. While she and her mother were close, I knew they never really confided in each other. Susan had always been her daddy’s girl.

  So where was she?

  It was obvious, I suppose, but I kept dancing around the answer. Frightened by what it might mean.

  But it was not the time to be scared. Not if I wanted to make up for not having been there earlier. Knowing that if I had been, I could have stopped this going so far.

  I started the car’s engine. The wipers brushed away raindrops into blurred streaks on the windscreen. The streets were quiet this late at night, save for taxis and a few folks who’d been working late or were maybe even just heading out. At Dot’s insistence, I’d recently outfitted the car with GPS. Program in your destination, the computer tells you where to go. Not always the best route, and I knew from listening to the news that these systems were notorious for driving people into lakes and across private property, but like anything else you just had to keep your wits about you and you’d be fine.

  Which I guess was a problem for me, the way I felt. But I kept myself focussed. Knowing where I wanted to go. Where this had been leading from the start.

  ###

  “What would you do?”

  “Hmmm?”

  One year before the accident. Me and Ernie working paperwork on an investigation, drowning in background and irrelevant information, coming up for air because if we didn’t we might never get to what we needed.

  Sometimes the best way to get results is to walk away.

  If only for five minutes. Put the problem behind you. Sometimes, it really seemed as though it solved itself.

  “What would you do if they left you alone with the worst bawbag you could think of? No questions asked. No consequences.”

  I wouldn’t recognise the same question rephrased two years later by a man I had been determined not to respect from the moment I walked into his office.

  And even coming from a man whom I really did respect, I found it hard to get at the honest answer without feeling some pressure. As though there really was a right and a wrong way to respond.

  “I don’t know.”

  Ernie smiled at that. Benevolent. Giving nothing away, really. He said, “I’ve thought about that one a lot. About what I’d do.”

  “And?”

  He said, “I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair, stretched and yawned, the back of his chair tipping as he did so. “I guess it depends on the bawbag, right?”

  “You ever asked your daughter?”

  “What she would do?” He sat forward again. Spun his chair so he was facing me. “The truth, McNee? I don’t think I want to know. I hope I never do.”

  I’ve thought about his response a lot over the years. Susan was always a straight arrow, her sense of justice absolute and unswerving. But there were moments when I thought I saw another side to her. When she stood up to cover for Mary Furst and ultimately for me, it wasn’t something I had expected. As though, for just a moment, she had become someone else entirely.

  In interviews, I’d seen hard men give up close buddies, betray confidences, because of the way she looked at them. And sure, I told myself that it was an act and a bloody good one at that, but in quieter moments, I have to wonder if maybe they weren’t somehow more perceptive than I gave them credit for. If maybe they hadn’t glimpsed a side to Susan she hid from her colleagues, her friends, her loved ones.

  Maybe Ernie had an idea of what his daughter was capable of.

  Or maybe he was just tired after going through the facts of a gruelling case, didn’t want to think about anyone he loved making the wrong decision. Because he knew what his own answer would be, despite his denial. And I think that scared him as much as anything else in the world.

  ###

  There were lights on downstairs.

  Wood lived maybe five miles out of the city. Aye, it cost bucks for a house like this, but he was gunning for Tayside’s top cop job according to the rumours, and he had the cash to flash that went along with that responsibility.

  I parked in the drive. Saw movement at the windows. A kitchen, by the look of it. The person moving was female. Late fifties, dark hair, wearing a heavy towelling dressing gown pulled tight against the cool of the encroaching evening.

  As I stepped out of the car, the woman moved out of the kitchen and came to the front door. As she stepped into the night, I noticed she walked without fear or hesitation. A stranger turning up at this hour was not something she considered unusual.

  I wondered what she knew about her husband. If she really understood his work.

  “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “Mrs Wood? I’m looking for your husband.”

  “Missed him.”

  “How long?”

  “He got a call. It happens. You know, being a copper.”

  I said, “I know.”

  “You’re on the job, then?”

  “I was.”

  “He know you?”

  I said, “You don’t know where he went?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone else been here tonight?”

  She had her arms folded across her chest. Suddenly on the defensive. Realising that maybe I wasn’t who she first thought I was.

  “Why?”

  “I need to find your husband. Does he have a number I can –?”

  “Who are you?”

  I closed the car door and stepped forward. Keeping my body language open and neutral. I wanted her to see I wasn’t here to hurt her husband.

  Or her.

  “Mrs Wood, how much do you know about what your husband does?”

  ###

  She made me sit at the breakfast bar with my hands on the worktop, palms down. She kept her distance at all times, standing across the other side of the kitchen. I noticed how the knife block was in reach and the door was in dashing distance.

  She was halfway to believing me, but it wasn’t quite taking. Because I was a stranger Asking awkward questions to which she wished she didn’t know the answers.

  The house was warm, even if she couldn’t feel it. The heat came from the Aga that dominated their enormous, spotless kitchen.

  “Tell me your name again.”

  I told her.

  She looked at my card with half an eye, as though I’d be ready to take advantage of any lapse in concentration.

  “And you’re an investigator?”

  “A private investigator. Used to be in the police. Like your husband.”

  �
��But you left?”

  “It was a personal matter.”

  “And you think my husband’s in danger?”

  “I think he’s been in danger for a very long time,” I said. “But I think tonight there’s someone out there who’s about to do something they’re going to regret.”

  “My husband can take care of himself.”

  “He’s been doing that for decades,” I said. “But he’s not expecting this. Please, I just need…”

  She took in a breath and held it. When she breathed out again, her shoulders relaxed a little. She said, “I’ll call him. If this is a wind-up, though…”

  “It’s not,” I said.” I let my hands slip off the worktop. She didn’t care or didn’t notice. Either way it was encouraging.

  She moved to the phone that was hanging on the wall near the door. Her eyes moved away from for a moment.

  I stayed still. Let her make the call.

  She turned to face me again after she’d dialled the numbers. Her face was calm at first, and then slowly I could see the wrinkles of worry appear in her forehead. They were deep, practised lines that formed after decades of concern.

  She said, “He’s not –” and then cut herself off. Spoke into the receiver, “Kevin, love, its Betty. Listen, you need to call me back. There’s someone here and –”

  I stood up.

  She ended the call mid-sentence.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wouldn’t be calling back. Instead, I walked out of the house.

  Into the dark.

  ###

  She finally answered. My insistence paying off.

  “Steed, you need to let me –”

  “Where are you?”

  “You don’t need to be involved in any –”

  “You know this is wrong.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s right. It’s the bloody right thing to do.”

  “You’ve told me before to let the professionals handle these kinds of cases. You’ve told me that you can’t become too close or –”

  “Save it,” she said. And I could hear a catch in her voice. A noise rattled down the line. The sound of rattling steel and engines. Close to the phone, enough that it drowned out her voice. The noise came in low at first and then became loud enough that I winced. If I hadn’t been on the hands free, I would have pulled the phone away from my ear. The noise filled up the inside of my car. But then it passed, and I got the impression that it had disappeared into the distance from wherever Susan was.

  For a moment there was silence. Susan cleared the line. No goodbye. Just a click. And a dead line.

  She knew I’d figured it out. At least, I had an idea where she was and what she was doing.

  Maybe I could get to her in time. I had to believe that.

  Because, for once, things had to work out for the best. Like in the books, the movies, I needed justice and fairness and happiness.

  Just once.

  Just to remind me that life was worth it. That we weren’t all fucked.

  TWENTY-NINE

  As the rail lines pass out of Dundee, heading west to the bridge, they elevate over the Kingsway and strike out across the water. There’s a beautiful house built directly underneath the tracks as they rise above the dual carriageway that runs parallel to the riverside. At one time, I believe it used to be a guard’s house. Whatever it once was, the house has always fascinated me. I’m rather taken with the idea that someone could live there with trains rumbling constantly overhead.

  But I wasn’t there that night to simply admire the local architecture.

  Just past the house, as the tracks reach the zenith of their elevation, there. The spaces underneath the struts have been converted into a storage facility.

  Following their split, Ernie’s dad hired one of the lockups to keep some of the possessions he and Katie had collected down the years. Some were to be sold off. Others were to be divided up when cooler minds prevailed.

  No-one hangs around the struts without business. Or, depending on their age, they’re there to waste time and get high in a place where no-one’s looking. Check the graffiti, you’d know this isn’t somewhere you want to go at night.

  Unless you have a very specific kind of business.

  The gates to the yard were open. The chain busted. Maybe a previous incident left unfixed, I couldn’t be sure.

  I left the car parked outside the gates and pushed them all the way open. They scraped tight on the concrete.

  Illumination came from the lights off the tracks that ran overhead. Assisted by the heavy black torch I had brought with me. I stepped inside the yard, my footsteps light and cautious.

  Nothing moved.

  I saw no sign of Susan’s car. No sign of anything at all.

  “Hello? Susan?”

  I kept still. Holding my breath. Listening close. Turned towards the sound of something banging; a rough sound with no real rhythm unless you could counted the syncopation of desperation. I walked towards the lockup where the sound was coming from.

  “Hello?” I knocked on the door.

  The banging increased. Frantic, now. Not against the door itself. No, the sound was muffled, as though whoever was making the noise was slamming against something inside the lockup, maybe the body of a car or a metal locker.

  I checked the door number. Not that I needed to, of course.

  Ernie’s lockup.

  I pulled at the door, twisted the handle. It rolled right up. The banging ceased.

  Inside, I couldn’t see anything. I blinked to let my eyes adjust. Flicked the torch around the interior.

  The light ran over a figure hunched on the ground, next to a set of metal shelves against the east wall of the lockup. He’d been gagged, had been making a racket by slamming his weight against those shelves. Small objects had been knocked off these and onto the floor. Broken china and shards of glass glittered in the light of my torch.

  I stepped forward for a better look at the man who had been left here, bound and gagged.

  Kevin Wood was rail-thin, his now-grey hair cropped short. Age hadn’t been kind to him, but then youth hadn’t been his finest hour, either; he’d always been an ugly bastard. He was covered in dust from the floor of the lockup. His face showed signs of what he’d been through. Swollen lips, open cuts, black eyes. His nose was misshapen and was gently trickling blood. Earlier, it had probably been a gush.

  I reached down and pulled off his gag.

  First words out of his mouth: “Fucking bitch cunt.”

  I reacted on instinct. Pulled my fist back. And then lashed out. The prick’s head snapped back, and the shelves rattled as his weight crashed against them once more. For a moment I thought they might come loose and topple over, crushing the ugly bastard.

  But they stayed standing.

  More’s the pity.

  He sat up again, slowly. And spat. Something solid landed on the ground. A tooth perhaps. “You know her, then?”

  “You know who she is?”

  “That arsehole’s daughter,” he said. “Fucksakes, should have just done the whole family.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Think I’d be saying anything if I didn’t, McNee? Christ, but you’re a tenacious fucker, I’ll give you that.” He sounded a world away from the cool, controlled copper who loved to appear in the media and talk about how dedicated he was to public service. Sure, he came across as smarmy, but his act had been good.

  Fooled everyone. Except, of course, those in the know.

  Like Burns.

  Like Ernie.

  But no-one can wear a mask all the time. The inevitable truth: it always drops. Sometimes only for a moment.

  Sometimes, you can never replace it.

  But in the end, a mask can only cover your true face for so long.

  The Kevin Wood beneath the mask was like a wild animal, snarling and lashing out. The chains seemed somehow appropriate.

  I said, “Why’d she leave you here?”

&
nbsp; “She had other business.”

  “Such as?”

  He was still for a moment. The fight went out of him. He didn’t look at me. “She let me live in exchange for the trigger man.”

  The trigger man.

  The man who killed her father.

  I’d thought maybe all she wanted was a pop at Wood.

  But she was aiming deeper than that. More personal. She didn’t give a toss for the corruption angle, or the decades of abuse of power. All she wanted was to get back at the man who had her father’s blood on his hands.

  Over the last few days I’d almost forgotten about the trigger man, obsessing over the conspiracy and the corruption. I’d wanted so desperately to connect Ernie’s death to Burns.

  Perhaps it burned differently after all these years, but I hadn’t recognised that same old desire for vengeance trying to disguise itself as something higher and nobler. As though it had muted inside me, becoming a quiet and insistent whisper rather than a roaring, all-consuming cry for closure.

  But even if I hadn’t seen it in myself, I should have seen it in Susan.

  “Give me his name.”

  Wood shook his head.

  I insisted: “The name.”

  “Get to fuck.”

  I grabbed him by the collar, hauled him up so our faces were inches apart. My body protested at the movement. My left hand didn’t want to close, so most of the heavy work was done with the right. I tried not to let the pain show.

  “The name.”

  “Or what?”

  “You know you’re sodded anyway? That if the police don’t come for you, David Burns will.”

  “Aye, because you’re so close to the foosty old cunt.”

  “Piss off!”

  But Wood was on a roll, maybe thinking he was like a shark with the scent of blood in the water: “I know he’s been making overtures, that for whatever reason he thinks you’d be a fine addition to his network. But you won’t go for it. If you had your way, you’d see him behind bars.” He hesitated a moment. “Or dead.”

  I let Wood drop.

  He landed with no dignity, but all the same he laughed. He wasn’t about to give up his confidence, even if he knew I’d never believe it.

  I had a number I never thought I’d use. But time was running out. This wasn’t about revenge any more for me. Or that desire to lash out at the world.