Falling Fast

by Neil Broadfoot

  ‘You think you can just leave me lying in the street?’ Charlie yelled. ‘Nobody does that, you bastard. Nobody!’ He kicked Derek one final time then leant forward, levelling the gun at his head. Rita screamed again as Charlie’s finger tightened on the trigger. Susie felt adrenalin sear through her veins. If she was going to do something, it had to be now. She had to…

  Before Susie could move, Sam McGinty drove himself forward, using his head as a battering ram on Charlie’s side. Charlie staggered, the roar of the gun deafening in the small room as Sam fell on top of him.

  Susie lunged forward, trying to keep her balance. She lashed out as hard as she could, shoulder-barging the hand that held the gun. Charlie bellowed in frustrated rage and kicked out, driving Sam aside and thudding him into Susie. She staggered, hit the corner of the coffee table and crashed into it, the table collapsing like cheap kindling under her.

  Charlie staggered to his feet, loomed over her. ‘You fucking bitch. You fucking little CUNT! I’m going to…’

  Susie drove her feet up as hard as she could into Charlie’s crotch. He fell backwards, bouncing off the fireplace and crumpling to the floor. Susie wriggled out of the ruin of the table, moving as fast as she could. She got to her feet, lurched over towards Charlie, desperate to get to the gun before he could, could…

  She was grabbed from behind and hurled back onto the couch. Looked up and saw Derek towering over Charlie like an angry, bloodied god. He kicked out, stamping down onto Charlie’s hand, the sound of bones snapping rising above the scream. He bent over and scooped up the gun, seemed to study it for a moment as though it were a toy he had never seen before, then dropped to his knees and rammed the gun into Charlie’s mouth.

  ‘How’s that, Charlie?’ he whispered. ‘You like that? Not as good as terrifying my folks, but not bad, huh?’ His arms trembled with rage. ‘It was him, wasn’t it, Charlie? He sent you, Buchan.’

  Charlie nodded slowly. Tears were leaking from his huge, terrified eyes.

  Derek nodded, satisfied. ‘I knew it. That fucking bastard. Don’t worry though, Charlie, I’ll give him your regards with this.’ He pushed the gun forward slightly, smiled as a dark patch spread across Charlie’s crotch.

  ‘Bye, Charlie,’ he said, turning his head away, preparing for the blast.

  ‘Derek.’ The voice was so calm and controlled, it took Susie a moment to recognise it as Rita’s. ‘Derek, that’s enough, son. Put it down, please.’

  Derek spun, confusion in his eyes. ‘Mum, I…’

  ‘No, Derek, enough. Put the gun down, son.’

  Derek looked back at Charlie then to Rita. After what seemed an eternity, he leant away, dropping the gun onto the floor and pushing it towards Susie.

  Rita McGinty smiled. She was crying again, but, to Susie, her tears seemed different. Clearer. Derek got up and untied his parents, gave them rough hugs before he did. Maybe it was the only way he thought he could.

  ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you?’ he asked Susie as he stood in front of her.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice even. ‘And I’ll tell people what you did here, how you helped me stop Charlie. But I need to ask you a few questions, Derek. You seem to be the man with a lot of answers.’

  Derek snorted. ‘Nah, I don’t think I’ll stick around for that,’ he said, checking Susie was still securely tied before heading for the back door.

  Sam stood up, placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘No more running, son,’ he said.

  Derek whirled round. ‘Dad, I can’t. After everything that’s happened, everything I did, there’s nothing here.’

  ‘There’s us,’ Sam said. ‘I’m not saying what you did was right, son, but at least tell us why you did it. Make us understand why you thought it was the right thing to do.’

  And there it was. Finally. That one, simple question. Why, Derek?

  Why?

  His eyes flitted between his father and Susie. Stay or go? Run or face the past? He sighed finally, shoulders sagging. The illusion of the angry god was gone, replaced by a confused and lost man.

  He walked over to Susie. ‘You better fucking tell them what I did,’ he said and then untied her.

  She nodded her thanks, picked up the gun and ejected the clip. Then she reached for her phone to call everything in. She was very careful. No one saw her hands shake.

  49

  It was just after 10pm when Susie walked into the pub, eyes roaming across the room for Doug. She saw him sitting at a corner booth, pint of Guinness in front of him, a glass she knew was a double vodka and lemonade sitting opposite, waiting for her.

  She took her seat, not saying a word but merely reaching for her drink. She hoped it would dampen the throbbing in the back of her head, a little memento of her encounter with Charlie Morris.

  She looked tired, Doug thought, but that was no surprise. Being held at gunpoint by a psychopath could do that to you.

  ‘You look like shit, Doug,’ she said, setting her drink back down on the table.

  Doug laughed, touched the growing bruise on his cheek. His face felt like it did when the dentist gave him anaesthetic before a filling; numb and foreign, full of strange contours and alien curves. He planned to be drunk long before the numbness wore off.

  ‘So,’ he said slowly, ‘how did it go?’

  Susie shook her head. She had spent the last ten hours being poked and prodded by doctors, filling out reports, writing up statements and, of course, being interviewed by fellow officers about what had happened at the McGintys’ home.

  In the films, the cops beat up the bad guys and went home. In reality, they went to do paperwork, especially when a gun was involved.

  ‘Well, we got what we were looking for,’ she said. ‘Morris admitted he was the man that beat you up outside your flat. Turns out he had a wee scrote named Mark Kirk following you for quite some time; finding out what you were doing, where you were going, who you were with.’ Her eyes fell on Doug, making sure he understood what she had just said.

  ‘You mean like me and you?’ He paused, took another drink of Guinness. ‘Shit. I take it Burns found out?’

  Susie nodded. ‘Oh yes. Hauled me into his office, gave me a real bollocking about not going to the press, jeopardising an investigation, not going through proper procedures, that sort of thing.’

  ‘He going to report you to the Chief Superintendent?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ Susie said, a small smile at the corners of her mouth. ‘He wanted to, but said he refused to give Buchan the satisfaction of seeing the Chief jump through hoops and claim a scalp.’

  ‘What about Buchan?’ Doug asked, remembering the way he had loomed over him with the poker. He shivered. ‘He regained consciousness yet?’

  ‘No, he’s still at the Infirmary. Most of his wounds were superficial, but his wife did a fair bit of damage when she stabbed him in the back.’ She watched Doug’s face go pale, his eyes fall to his pint. ‘She’s going to be okay, Doug. Really. They’ve got her sedated at the moment, and she’s going to be evaluated in a couple of days. If there’s a way to help her, the doctors will.’

  Doug wasn’t so sure. He remembered the desperation on Linda Buchan’s face as she scrambled around the floor looking for a shard of glass, the howl of frustration when he stopped her. He wondered if he had done the right thing.

  ‘…what the fiscal says.’

  Doug looked up from his glass, Susie’s voice dragging him from his thoughts. ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  Susie smiled slightly. ‘I said, we’ll have to see what the fiscal says about the case against Buchan. We’ve got him for trying to kill you, and of course there’s what’s in the diary, but the rest of it is all fairly circumstantial.’

  Doug gave a frustrated grunt. She was right. According to what he had managed to find out, there had been no specific forensic evidence linking Buchan to Lizzie Renwick’s murder. Anything that was found, such as clothing fibres or fingerprints, could be explained away by
any half-decent lawyer easily. After all, it had been his daughter’s gallery, and what father didn’t visit his daughter?

  But he had done it, Doug was sure he had. He had gone to the gallery, thinking Lizzie had the diary and the pictures of Bethany, tortured her to try and find them and, when she had told him she didn’t know where they were, he had killed her. He was capable of it, Doug had seen that much in Buchan’s eyes when he loomed over him with the poker. No fear, no doubt, no hesitation; only hatred and intent.

  Doug had discovered his secret and, as a result, had to die. Lizzie would have been no different to him. Just another threat to his reputation and what was left of his career.

  According to Katherine’s diary, her father had begun abusing her when she was twelve. She had written about her confusion as to why ‘Daddy wanted to touch me in his secret way today’ and how he had taught her ‘new ways to show that she loved him’. The diary was a catalogue of abuse stretching over the years, building to the sickeningly inevitable rape.

  ‘It hurt so much,’ she wrote. Doug couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could see tear stains on the page. ‘He was on top of me, pinning me down, panting in my ear like a bull. I tried to tell him to stop, tried to push him away, but he was too strong, forcing it into me again and again and again. When it was over, he collapsed on top of me and burst into tears, telling me how sorry he was, how much he loved me. I hate him.’

  Shortly after that, she began to head out at the weekends, finding drugs and booze were an easy way to blot out the horrors she endured at home. The horrors she was too ashamed and afraid to share with her mother. Reading the diary revealed she lasted for a year in a drug-addled haze before, after one attack had turned violent, with Katherine left bleeding and bruised after Buchan had tried to bugger her, she had fled.

  Not long after, she ran into Derek at a nightclub. What attracted him to her? Doug wondered. Her dependence, her vulnerability? Whatever it was, they had developed a bond, began a relationship. And, somewhere along the way, she had told him about what her father had done to her.

  ‘You want another drink?’ Susie asked, draining the last of her vodka and heading for the bar. Doug nodded and she returned a few moments later with a fresh pint for him and another vodka – a double – for herself.

  ‘So, does it explain what happened when she met McGinty?’ Susie asked. She knew Doug had read the diary, but she hadn’t been able to get to it herself yet. And, with McGinty in hospital for observation after the beating Charlie had given him, she hadn’t been able to get his side of the story, either. For that, she would have to rely on Doug.

  Doug nodded. ‘Yeah, from what the diary says, after she overdosed, she tried to sort herself out. She says that she and Derek were spending more and more time together, and she wanted to get herself off heroin. But she couldn’t do that on her own, so she went to her dad and demanded money for a rehab programme.’

  He laughed sadly. ‘The poor bitch. After everything she went through, to have to go back to him and ask for help to kick a habit he drove her to. But he helped her all right, gave her the cash, checked her into the programme in Niddrie and put her under an assumed name then abandoned her. All to protect his precious career.’

  ‘But how does Bethany Miller fit into all this?’ Susie asked. And how did you find out about her link to Buchan?’

  Doug explained what Tomlin had told him about McGinty’s hunt for a man who had hurt Katherine, how he had traced that man to the Shore Thing Sauna in Leith. He paused when Susie’s mouth fell open.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something the woman who heard Linda Buchan and McGinty arguing said. She said she heard McGinty say “off the leash”, but thought she could have misheard it. I bet it was “off to Leith”.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Doug said. ‘He must have told her exactly what Buchan had done to Katherine, and how, when she ran away, he found other ways to get his… thrills.’ Bethany’s words: He always made me wear a wig. A blonde one. And he always called me Katie. But there’s nothing too weird in that, is there?

  ‘And that’s when it all went wrong?’ Susie asked. ‘When he started to get kinky with Bethany?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Doug nodded, taking a gulp of his pint to kill the pain. He felt a twist of discomfort talking about this. He had promised to keep Bethany’s name out of it. But after everything, Susie deserved to know it all. And besides, he knew she would keep quiet once she understood.

  ‘So, what happened?’ she asked, rubbing a hand across her forehead as though trying to massage away the frustration of not knowing what Doug did.

  ‘Bethany wouldn’t tell me the details, but you can probably guess. She had Buchan tied up one night, it all got a little out of hand. He lashed out, promised he’d make her pay, then…’ He shook his head as the thought occurred to him.

  Jesus, it really was all about control.

  ‘Then,’ Susie said, fingers subconsciously drumming Morse Code for frustration on her glass, ‘he gets McGinty to attack Bethany. But why? And how?’

  ‘Katherine,’ Doug said simply. The thoughts were coming too fast now. If he wanted to outrun them, he would have to switch to whisky soon. Not the worst idea.

  He glanced at Susie, saw the confusion on her face.

  ‘It’s all in Katherine’s diary,’ he said, remembering what he had read. Wished he couldn’t, knew he always would.

  I don’t know how to write this. What happened this morning. It still doesn’t feel true. I wish it wasn’t. Not any of it. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps I’ve gone mad. But that’s just wishful thinking. But I have to write it down. Record it. Because if I don’t, I’ll begin to doubt all of it. Because I want to – more than anything in the world. To believe this isn’t true.

  I’m sitting here, pen in hand, and I feel numb. Like the world has been picked up, shaken and put back down again. But now everything’s in the wrong place.

  I loved him so much. I love him. But do I? I don’t know how I feel.

  It was just after 9, I know because I was running late for work. I opened the door and he was just standing there. I’ve never understood when people say someone looks like death warmed up, but I did after seeing Derek.

  He barely said a word, looked in shock. I was so startled to see him I didn’t say anything for a few seconds so we just stood there saying nothing, looking at each other. I felt my heart skip. His look was so dark I knew we were over. That he was going to end it. End us.

  I was the first to speak, I don’t remember what I said, something breezy probably. But I wasn’t going to let him in. Not if he was going to end it. He could bloody stand on the step and see if I cared. But when he spoke his voice sounded so empty and strange that I agreed to let him in.

  He sat on the couch for a while, like a statue. Just staring at his hands. Then he asked if he could take a shower. I remember feeling irritated but his eyes turned on me and there was a look I hadn’t seen before and for the first time I felt afraid. But I dismissed that idea. Foolish, I thought. This is Derek. Lovely sweet devoted Derek.

  ‘I’ve done something…’ he said and held my gaze for the first time. There was something in his voice that made me believe him. But what he told me was so sickening I still can’t believe it. How could he? Derek, so gentle and loving, considerate when we were together. How could he do something so… so violent, so degrading to another human being? Something so like my father? I felt a creeping over my skin that I didn’t actually know this person. This man who I thought I loved. He explained to me in great detail. What he had done to that poor girl. Like I was his priest hearing his confession. I wanted him to stop. Begged him to stop. Tell me it’s not true I begged. Please just stop.

  But he didn’t. Not even when I couldn’t breathe through the tears. He kept going. How he’d hurt her. How he’d humiliated her. And all for me?! How could he blame me for this? My fault.

  Was it? Had I driven Daddy to it, then Derek? I just don’t know anymore. He collapsed onto
his knees at my feet. Wouldn’t take his eyes from mine. Begged for forgiveness. Begged for me to understand. To know I loved him. What could I give him? A dozen Hail Mary’s?

  I needed to get away from him. I went to the bathroom to wash my face. And I saw my reflection. How could he love me? How could anyone love me? Red, blotchy. I tried to calm my skin. To look normal again. But there would be no normal again. And suddenly felt a wave of relief. He wasn’t breaking up with me, he DID still love me.

  ‘I had to do it, don’t you see?’ he said. ‘Tommy said that if I didn’t do this, didn’t… take the pictures, they’d find you. Hurt you. And I couldn’t bear that, Katie. I just couldn’t.’

  Doug shook his head. Buchan must have loved it. Get the man who was hunting him to attack the prostitute who humiliated him and take the pictures to prove it. He used people like chess pieces.

  Susie drained her glass, crunched hard on the ice. ‘So she forgives him? But they know there’s no way he can run, so she keeps the pictures as what? Insurance?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Doug said. ‘Or maybe they were trying to blackmail Buchan all along. She mentions in the diary that they wanted to make a life together. Maybe that’s what they were asking Buchan for. The money for the pictures. Remember what Lizzie heard her say on the phone? “It’s the price we agreed?”.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Susie said. ‘So that’s why he hired Charlie to track Derek down as soon as he resurfaced. But how the hell did he even know how to get in touch with someone like Charlie, anyway?’

  ‘The saunas,’ Doug replied, remembering what Tomlin had told him about Charlie and Derek working together. ‘Charlie must have recognised him as someone with money, Buchan must have recognised him as someone he could use. Especially when it came to satisfying some of his…requests.’

  ‘What I don’t get though is why wait until Katherine was dead? Why not try to kill him sooner?’

  Doug rubbed at his eyes. They felt grainy with exhaustion. ‘Control,’ he muttered, more to himself than Susie. ‘With Katherine alive, Buchan knew he had a way to keep Derek at bay, string them both along and pretend to pay for their silence. But the moment Katherine died, Buchan knew Derek had nothing left to lose, that he would be coming to him for money, or worse.’