Say You're Sorry: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A DCI Campbell McKenzie Detective Conspiracy Thriller No 1)

by IAN C. P. IRVINE

  Although to some, the chicken-and-the-egg scenario would probably always be lost on them, regardless.

  Finding the rock close to the edge of the cliff, but sufficiently far away to allay his vertigo, he had sat down and taken a long, deep breath.

  A picture of Tommy McNunn popped into his head.

  Why, he didn't know.

  Was it because, perhaps Tommy McNunn had been standing here, almost at this very same spot, several weeks ago when he had pushed Urqhart over the edge? Or was it something else?

  He looked around himself. Cogitating. Mulling over his thoughts. Wondering what it was.

  And then suddenly it was there.

  In blinding clarity.

  Perhaps there was another reason why McNunn's two most trusted men had both been found dead -less than a day after someone had reportedly stated that one of them had blabbed off in a drunken stupor that he had been at this spot with McNunn the night Urqhart had died!

  McKenzie swore.

  "Shit!" he exclaimed, standing up, and punching one of his hands against the palm of the other. "The bastard has done it again! And he's going to walk away from this scot free too!"

  "Blast!" he shouted into the wind and at the city he loved so much. The city he had vowed to protect from the likes of McNunn and Petrovsky.

  Turning his back on the city in shame, he stared out across the Hunter's Bog, the hidden valley that nestled in the bowl behind the Crags.

  As he stared deeply into its emptiness, his mind filled with the reality of what he was now sure had happened.

  McNunn had killed Urqhart. Somehow, he wasn't exactly sure how yet, McNunn had managed to manufacture evidence and shift the blame and the focus of attention to Petrovsky. Like little puppies following McNunn's intentions, McKenzie and his team had then arrested Petrovsky and taken him off the street.

  Now McNunn was killing off the others in Petrovsky's organisation and was initiating a forced takeover of Petrovsky's lucrative businesses. And McKenzie was helping him.

  The likelihood was that McNunn had committed the deed accompanied by his two favourite heavies, who were the only witnesses.

  When one of them had got drunk and spoken aloud, Rab McDermott and the other thug who hung out with him had both been killed.

  By McNunn.

  Of course, McNunn would make it look like his two boys had been killed by Petrovsky's gang in retaliation for killing their men and hope that everyone would then blame Petrovsky for their deaths.

  Which they had automatically done, falling for it hook, line and sinker.

  And now the only people who could probably connect McNunn with the murder of Urqhart were dead, with the suspicion and the evidence all now pointing to Petrovsky.

  Leaving McNunn as free as a bird and above all suspicion.

  It made too much sense not to be true.

  The feeling of elation that accompanied the clarity of knowing what really might have happened was short lived.

  It was quickly replaced with anger and a growing depression.

  McNunn had done it again.

  McKenzie had been chasing him for most of his career, and try as he might, he could never pin a single thing on him.

  As he stomped down the hill back to his office, a dark cloud descended upon McKenzie and his head filled with dark, negative thoughts.

  Nobody could stop McNunn. Nobody.

  He played with the law. He was above the law. He laughed at the law.

  He was untouchable.

  And after McNunn had taken over Petrovsky's operations, nothing would stop him from taking over all the other crime lords in Scotland.

  McNunn was becoming a giant of crime that would grow bigger and more powerful until one day his shadow fell across the whole of Scotland, and the Scotland he loved would be gone forever.

  Corrupt. Decadent. Depraved.

  Even the music and the fourth beer in the Fiddler's Arms that night couldn’t wash away the reality which now pressed heavily upon his every conscious thought.

  McKenzie had lost, and would continue to lose.

  McNunn had won, and would continue to win.

  There was no one who could stop him now.

  No one.

  Chapter 26

  Tommy McNunn's House,

  Edinburgh

  Tuesday

  7 p.m. G.M.T.

  Tommy McNunn sat in his office in his home, sipping a glass of whisky in one hand, and holding his open laptop on his lap in the other.

  He was idly going through his personal emails, trying to unwind from the events of the past week.

  In the past few days the pace of things had picked up significantly, and it was not all good.

  Having to put a gun against the head of his two best men was not something he had planned to do when he started the war with Petrovsky. The timing could not have been worse.

  Still, the intelligence he had got from Caroline could not have been ignored. He’d had to act, and quickly, and not knowing which one was to blame, he had had to make a very uncomfortable choice.

  If he killed one, and got it wrong, the other would be so spooked and so worried that Tommy would soon discover the truth, that he would almost certainly have disappeared before Tommy could go after him.

  And like the accountant, both his men could implicate him in everything. Whoever survived could put Tommy away in prison for the rest of his life.

  If he left it longer, hoping to give himself time to find out which of the two was guilty, he ran the risk that they would be picked up by the police, questioned, and the truth may come out. That scenario, too, would lead to an unhappy end.

  Killing one of them and not the other had a fifty per cent chance of getting it right. And a fifty per cent chance of getting it very wrong.

  The only way he would have certainty, would be to execute them both.

  That way, Tommy would come out alive and kicking, and it was immediately obvious that by timing it right, suspicion would fall upon Petrovsky and he would walk free.

  The whole thing made him very angry though. He had really liked Rab and Dougie. They had both been with him for years. Why the hell did one of them have to ruin the whole thing by getting drunk and blabbing about the one thing that they knew they must not ever talk about: Tommy McNunn.

  Rab and Dougie had both known the score. They both knew why Tommy paid them so much money and trusted them with so much.

  And, the moment that that trust was lost or abused, they had always both known what would happen.

  The irony of it was that they had blabbed about the execution of someone else that had crossed Tommy and abused his trust, and now they too had both died for a similar offence.

  Idiots.

  The only positive to come out of it all would be that it would give another two lucky members of his team some positive career progression. Crime was a business, and the best criminals were in fact also the best businessmen, operating like businesses in a very competitive environment. Maintaining and motivating top staff was as important a facet of his businesses as it would be for any other corporation.

  Rab and Dougie had been well liked. Everyone would be mad now that they were dead, and motivated more than ever before to exact sweet revenge against those responsible for their deaths in Petrovsky's band of thugs.

  Tommy smiled to himself.

  Perhaps having to kill the two idiots might prove not to have been such a bad thing after all. Their deaths could prove to be the flag, around which his organisation may find the motivation to rally and move against the remaining managers of Petrovsky's businesses.

  "You see!", Tommy whispered to himself. "That's what sets me aside from the others. I take misfortune and turn it into a fortune. My fortune. Carpe diem, Tommy m'boy. Carpe fucking diem!"

  Taking another large sip of the amber nectar, a £95 bottle of his favourite malt from a small, exclusive distillery on the Isle of Mull, he began to feel a bit more relaxed.

  Glancing down at his email
s, however, his hackles immediately rose again, as an email from his bank reminded him about the farce with his car.

  Clicking on the email, he scanned it quickly. It was an email from the security department, stating that they had observed some peculiar behaviour in his bank account. Could Mr McNunn confirm that he had authorised this and that he was aware of it?

  Tommy immediately realised that it was probably referring to his accountant that morning: he'd spent hours trawling through Tommy's bank accounts, going from one to another, searching all the records he could find. To someone who worked for the bank, the activity would have definitely seemed suspicious.

  The email presented Tommy with two simple options: to confirm that he knew of the activity, or to request that the bank investigate it further.

  To respond to either, he only had to click on the link of his choice.

  Now embarrassed by the whole affair - and the obvious fuck-up that his accountant must have made, and also perhaps slightly too relaxed by the whisky, he chose the option on the left of his screen, confirming that the activity was known to him.

  He then deleted the email and opened up the next one.

  Twenty minutes later, and feeling very much more relaxed, and perhaps a little drunk, Tommy McNunn was settled back in his armchair and watching some young woman in an online chat room take off her clothes for him.

  It was a good service as far as these things went.

  For a relatively small but eminently affordable fee, she did whatever he asked her to do. He got to watch, in full HD. And he never had to talk to her once.

  Which was good, for many reasons. Not the least being that the woman on the other end of the camera never got a clue that the pervert who was watching her was actually her boss.

  Tommy McNunn would often end up watching naked women perform for him. It was increasingly becoming one of his favourite ways of unwinding in the evening. The way Tommy saw it however, was that this activity was actually all still work, and not deviant in any way.

  Online porn was now a growing part of his business empire, and it was essential that he should conduct ongoing quality research to ensure that the business was delivering what the customers wanted.

  He was, in effect, just conducting quality assurance, and enjoying himself in the process.

  "It's a tough job," he liked to joke to himself, "and someone has to do it!"

  Tommy was staring at the screen, following the young lady's attempt to undo her own bra with her teeth, - the latest challenge which he had just issued to her -when his screen suddenly went black.

  "What the hell...?" Tommy swore, tapping the keyboard to see if he could bring it back to life.

  Two large words suddenly appeared on the screen. White words on a black background.

  Tommy sat up. Squinting his eyes and repositioning his reading glasses on his nose, he stared at the words.

  "It's time..." the words announced, loudly and emphatically.

  "For what?" Tommy heard himself ask aloud.

  The two words on the screen slowly faded out and were replaced by a picture of a large cube of metal.

  Tommy immediately recognised it for it was: all that remained of a car that had been squashed to smithereens.

  Before he could react, the picture of the crushed car faded out, and four words took its place.

  "... to SAY YOU'RE SORRY!"

  Tommy blinked several times, not understanding what the hell was going on.

  Then before he could react any further, the words faded, the computer screen went completely black, and his computer turned itself off.

  Along with the lights. The central heating. And every other electrical device in his house.

  Chapter 27

  Tommy McNunn's House,

  Edinburgh

  Tuesday

  10 p.m. G.M.T.

  "What the hell do you mean that there's nothing you can do about it until tomorrow morning?" Tommy McNunn demanded from the man in the call centre in India. "All the power has gone from our house, we have no lights and no boiler. It's bloody October, and we're freezing to death!"

  "I'm sorry, sir, but I do not have the permission to switch your electricity back on. Nothing can be done about it until you pay your outstanding bill and the senior manager is back in the morning to review your account."

  "What do you mean, my outstanding bill? What outstanding bill? We always pay our bills. Bloody hell, we pay them by direct debit. You get the money automatically, every time you demand it!"

  "I'm truly sorry, sir. But as I have told you already, this isn't a technical fault. The electricity to your home has been cut off because of your refusal to pay your energy bill. We have sent you at least six letters, which you seem to have ignored, and earlier today you did not attend your court summons, and permission was granted to cut you off. If you agree to pay your bill now in full, along with a reconnection charge and an administration penalty, I'm sure the manager will authorise for your electricity to be reconnected back tomorrow morning. As I mentioned earlier, you've come through to the emergency department, and this is not an unplanned outage. You were warned about it..."

  "Listen to me, sir, and I will say this only once... I need you to reconnect me to the fucking national electricity grid NOW. Not tomorrow, not later, but NOW! Do you get me? There has been a terrible mistake in your bloody accounting system... and..."

  "Sir, I am sorry. There's nothing I can do for you just now. If you'd like to pay your bill in full, I can transfer you to another department?"

  "But I don't owe you any money! What good will it do if I give you even more of my money when you already have all the money I owe you... you'll just bloody lose that too!" Tommy was shaking, sobering up rapidly, but still not able to grasp completely what was happening.

  He'd been on the phone for over an hour already, getting transferred from one department to another. No one seemed able to help him. Everyone insisted that it would be down to someone else. The only thing in common with everyone was that they all insisted that he hadn't paid his bills for months. He'd tried getting hold of his accountant already, but he seemed to be out for the evening or was not picking up his calls.

  None of this made any sense.

  "So how come I've not received any of your warning letters?" he asked the man in India.

  "I cannot tell you that, sir. All I can promise you is that the computer has copies of the letters that were sent to you. I can give you the dates of when they were sent and send you copies by email if you wish?"

  "What's the point? Are you not listening to me? You've fucking switched all the electricity off and I can't get on the internet. And I can't get email on this stupid mobile phone."

  "I'm sorry..." the man on the other end began to apologise again.

  Tommy hung up.

  He was livid.

  After having been on the phone for so long, and having made no progress, as mad as he was, he realised that there was nothing more that he could do just then. Tommy was a pragmatist. The earliest he was going to get any sense made out of this situation was tomorrow morning. It would have to wait until then.

  Right now, there was something even more important playing on his mind.

  This was the second time in two days that someone had told him that he hadn't made any bank payments. Payments that he relied on his accountant to make for him.

  In the digital world in which everyone now lived, Tommy McNunn knew the importance of keeping up-to-date with all his debts, and ensuring that the basics of his life were always available: water, electricity, beer, women, cars, drugs...

  He was a businessman. He depended upon a good credit rating. He needed people to trust that if he owed them money, he would pay them.

  Likewise, in return he always insisted that people pay him on time. Always. Or else.

  Picking up his glass and swallowing the rest of the whisky in one, he thought of his accountant for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes. He'd now let him down twice in one day.


  Twice he'd messed up. Twice McNunn had suffered.

  Was he doing this deliberately?

  Was the bloody accountant working for Petrovsky?

  Fuelled by his anger and the whisky, his mind began to take strange turns of reason.

  Picking up his phone again, he tried to call him one more time, but discovered that his phone was running out of charge.

  "Shit," he swore, realising that he couldn't even charge it.

  Luckily, he had managed earlier to call Mrs McNunn and warn her not to come home from her friends.

  "Stay over, or get a hotel room!" he had advised her.

  Already he was grateful for the peace and quiet.

  As he sat in his armchair in the dark with no possible electronic disruptions and warming himself with another whisky, his mind wandered again, this time back to the strange message that had flashed up on his laptop screen earlier.

  "Say you're sorry!"

  So, who was demanding that he should say he was sorry?

  His thoughts immediately turned to Ivor Petrovsky and the war he had just started.

  Was it possible that this was some form of retaliation on behalf of Petrovsky's team? Had Petrovsky organised the crushing of his car?

  If not, how did he know about it?

  Shit, admittedly the whisky wasn't helping, but still none of this was making any sense!

  Were the accountant and Petrovsky working together? Tommy didn't know how he was doing it, but Petrovsky was obviously messing with Tommy's world.

  "Fuck you, Petrovsky!", McNunn swore aloud. "I'm going to make you say you're sorry, even if it's the last thing I do!"

  Standing up slowly from the deep armchair, and walking carefully to the corner of the room in the dark, he knelt, feeling with his fingers and lifted the carpet and fiddled with one of the floorboards.

  Underneath it there was a digital safe.

  Tommy was tired, and he had decided it would probably be best just to go to bed.

  With Rab and Dougie no longer with him, and having not yet had the time to appoint their successor's, Tommy was suddenly very aware that he was all alone in the house.