Pray for the Dying

by Quintin Jardine

  Now there’s a real kick in the ego, Skinner thought. She doesn’t know who I am after all.

  ‘For the purposes of the tape,’ the deputy began, ‘I am ACC Bridget Gorman, accompanied by acting Chief Constable Bob Skinner, here to interview Mr Scott Mann, whose legal representative is also present.’

  Murphy glared at Skinner, but could not hide her surprise at his presence. He could read her mind. If the top man is doing this interview himself, my client is in much deeper shit than I thought.

  ‘Well? Get on with it,’ she snapped.

  ‘Ms Murphy,’ Gorman said, ‘you’re here to advise Mr Mann of his legal rights and to ensure that these aren’t infringed. But you don’t speak for him, and you don’t direct us.’

  As they spoke, Skinner fixed his gaze on Scott Mann, drawing his eyes to him and locking them to his as if by a beam. He held him captive, not blinking, not saying a word, keeping his head rock steady. The silent exchange went on for almost a minute, until the prisoner could stand the invisible pressure no longer and broke free, staring down at the desk.

  ‘Look at me,’ the chief murmured, just loud enough for the recorders to pick up. ‘I want to see what we’re dealing with here. I want to see what sort of person you are. So far I’ve seen nothing; a nonentity in the literal sense of the word. They say you were a cop once. They say you’re a loving husband and father. I don’t see any of those people; they’re all hiding from me. Look at me, Scott.’

  ‘Mr Skinner!’ Viola Murphy yelled, her voice shrill. ‘I won’t bloody have this! I protest!’

  His head moved, very slightly, and his eyes engaged hers. She stared back, and shivered, in spite of herself.

  ‘No you don’t,’ he told her, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘You sit there, you stay silent and you do not interfere with my interview. If you raise your voice to me again and use any more abusive language, I will suspend these proceedings and charge you with breach of the peace, and possibly also with obstruction. Then we will wait for another lawyer to arrive to represent both Mr Mann and you.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ she gasped.

  ‘I have a long and distinguished record of never joking, Ms Murphy. I advise you not to test me.’ He turned back to Mann who was looking at him once more, astonished. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I have your attention again.’

  He fell silent once more, then reached inside his jacket, and produced what appeared to be three rectangles of white card. He turned the top one over, to reveal a photograph, of Detective Inspector Charlotte Mann, then laid it in front of her husband.

  ‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a photo of his wife, a senior CID officer.’

  He turned the second image over and placed it beside the first.

  ‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a photo of his son, Jake Mann.’

  He turned the third over and put it beside the other, watching Mann recoil in horror as he did so.

  ‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a close-up photo of the body of Chief Constable Antonia Field, taken after she was shot three times in the head in the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, on Saturday evening.’

  He paused, as the shock on the prisoner’s face turned into something else: fear.

  ‘What I’m asking you now, Mr Mann,’ he continued, ‘is this. How could you betray your wife and compromise her career, how could you condemn your wee boy to the whispers and finger-pointing of his school pals, by being part of the conspiracy that led to Toni Field lying there on the floor with her brains beside her?’ His gaze hardened again; in an instant his eyes became as cold as dry ice. He reached inside his jacket again and produced a fourth image. It was grainy but clear enough.

  ‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a photograph of himself in the act of handing a parcel to a second man, identified as Mr Basil Brown, also known as Bazza.’

  He glanced at the solicitor. ‘To anticipate what should be Ms Murphy’s next question, we know that Mr Mann was not receiving the package because that image was taken from a CCTV recording that shows the exchange. However, Ms Murphy, your client did receive something from Mr Brown and that is also shown on the video.’

  His hand went to his jacket once more, but this time to the right side pocket. He produced a clear evidence bag and slammed it on to the table. ‘For the tape,’ he announced, ‘I am showing Mr Mann an envelope which his wife discovered today in their home and sent to us. It bears the crest of Mr Brown’s taxi firm and contains four hundred and twenty pounds.

  ‘It hasn’t yet been tested for fingerprints and DNA but when it is we’re confident it will link the two men. We can’t ask Mr Brown about this as he was found dead in Glasgow on Sunday. However, Mr Mann, we don’t need him, or even that evidence. We’ve recovered the paper from the package you handed over and we’ve got your DNA and prints, and his, from that. We can also prove that the package contained two police uniforms, worn as disguises by the men who assassinated Chief Constable Field.’

  He stopped, and locked eyes with Mann yet again. His subject, the former detective, and veteran of many interviews, was white as a sheet and trembling.

  ‘All that means,’ Skinner continued, ‘that we can prove you were an integral part of the plot to murder my predecessor, and it is our duty to charge you with that crime.

  ‘You’ll be lonely in the dock, Scott; it’ll just be you and Freddy Welsh, the man who supplied the guns. Everybody else in the chain is dead, bar one, the man who gave the order for the hit, recruited the planner and funded the operation.’ He paused. ‘I think we’ve reached the point,’ he went on, ‘where you bury your face in your hands and burst into tears.’

  And Mann did exactly that.

  Skinner waited, allowing the storm to break, to run its course and then to abate. When the prisoner had regained a semblance of self-control, he asked him, ‘What’s your story, Scott? For I’m sure you have one.’

  ‘My client,’ Viola Murphy interposed, ‘isn’t obliged to say anything.’

  The chief sighed, then smiled. ‘I know that as well as you do,’ he replied. ‘And you know as well as I do that given the evidence we have against him, if your client takes that option and sticks to it, then the best he can hope for is a cell with a sea view.

  ‘Silence will be no defence, Ms Murphy. The best you will be able to offer will be a plea in mitigation, and by that time it will be too late, because once he’s convicted, the sentence will be mandatory. I’m offering the pair of you the chance to make that plea to me now, and through me to the fiscal, before he’s charged with anything.’

  ‘He said he was only borrowin’ them,’ Scott Mann blurted out. ‘He said he would give me them back.’

  ‘Okay,’ the chief responded. ‘Now for the big question. Did he tell you why he was borrowing them?’

  ‘He said it was for a fancy dress dance, for charity. He told me that he and Cec wanted tae go as polis, and that they wanted it to be authentic.’

  Skinner leaned forward. ‘And you seriously believed that?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I chose to. The fact is, sir, Ah didn’t want to know what they were really for, because I didn’t have any choice.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? You had a very simple choice. You could have told your wife that Bazza Brown had asked you to acquire two police uniforms for him, and let her handle his request. Jesus, man, even if your half-arsed story is true, by not telling Lottie and co-operating with Brown, you condemned a woman to death.’

  ‘I ken that now,’ Mann wailed. ‘But like I said, I didnae have any choice. Bazza’s had a hold on me from way back, since I was a cop. It’s no’ just the drink that’s a problem for me. Ah’m an addictive personality. Anything I do, I do it to the limit and beyond.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Not that: gambling. Horses, mostly, but there was the cards too. Bazza’s old man was ma bookie, and then he died and the brothers took over. Bazza gave me a tab, extended credit,
he called it, but what he was really doin’ was lettin’ me pile up debt. One night he introduced me to a poker school. Ah did all right early on, but I think that was rigged, to suck me in. Then I lost it all back, but Ah was beyond stoppin’ by then. Bazza kept on stakin’ me, letting my tab get bigger and bigger. It got completely out of control, until before I knew it I was about seventy-five grand down, on top of twelve and a half that I’d owed him before.’

  He paused, and his eyes found Skinner, reversing their earlier roles. ‘That was when I was truly fucked. He pressed me for the money, even though he knew I didnae have it. He got heavy. He threatened me, he threatened Lottie and he even threatened wee Jakey, even though he was only a baby then.

  ‘I threatened him back, or Ah tried to, told him he was messing wi’ a cop and that I could have him done. He laughed at me; then he put a blade to my throat and told me that it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to be found up a close in an abandoned tenement with a needle hangin’ out my arm and an overdose of heroin in ma bloodstream. And Bazza did not kid about those things. So I agreed tae pay him off in kind.’

  ‘How?’ the chief murmured.

  ‘I became his grass, within the force. I told him everything we knew about him. Every time he was under surveillance he knew about it. If one of his boys was ever done for anything, Ah’d fix the evidence, or I’d give Bazza a list of the witnesses against him and he’d sort them.’

  ‘You mean he killed them?’

  ‘No, he never needed to go that far. That would have been stupid, and he wasn’t.’

  ‘So you were his safety net within the force?’

  ‘Aye. And I got uniforms for him, once before.’

  ‘You did? When?’

  ‘About six months before I was kicked out. He gave me the same story: a fancy dress party. That time he did give me them back, after they’d been used in a robbery at an MoD arms depot. All the guys that were in on it were caught eventually, apart from Bazza.’ He frowned. ‘That was a funny one, a Special Branch job rather than our CID.’

  And I know why, Skinner thought. Bazza was off limits on the NCIS database because he’d grassed on his accomplices in the robbery . . . or possibly set the whole thing up for MI5.

  ‘How did you get the uniforms, then and this time?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got a friend who works in the warehouse. I asked for a favour.’

  ‘I don’t imagine it was done out of the goodness of your friend’s heart.’

  Mann shot him a tiny smile. ‘It was, as it happened.’

  ‘Eh?’ The chief constable was taken aback. ‘So why did you have that cash from Bazza Brown?’

  ‘Ah told him that Ah had to pay the supplier.’

  ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  ‘Aw, sir. Do ye really need it?’

  Skinner stared at him, then he laughed. ‘Are you kidding me? Of course we do. The guy’s as guilty as you are, almost. Name, now.’

  ‘Chris McGlashan,’ the prisoner sighed. ‘Sergeant Chris McGlashan. And it’s no a guy; it’s Chris, as in Christine. Please, sir,’ he begged. ‘Can ye no’ leave her out of it? Can you not say I broke intae the warehouse and stole them?’

  ‘Why the bloody hell should I do that?’

  ‘She’ll deny it.’

  ‘I’m sure she will, but we’ll lift her DNA as well, from the package and the equipment.’

  ‘Aw Jesus, no! Lottie . . .’

  The obvious dawned. ‘Aw Jesus, indeed!’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘You stupid, selfish, irresponsible son-of-a . . .’ he snapped. ‘This Chris, she’s your bit on the side, isn’t she? You’re an addictive personality right enough, Scott. The booze, the horses, the women . . . Is she the only one you’ve been two-timing Lottie with, or have there been others?’

  Mann seemed to slump into himself. ‘One or two,’ he sobbed.

  ‘Mr Skinner,’ Viola Murphy ventured, ‘is this relevant to your investigation?’

  ‘Probably not, but it does demonstrate what a weak, untrustworthy apology for a husband and father your client is . . . let alone what a disgrace he was as a serving police officer.’

  He turned back to his subject. ‘How did Bazza react when you were chucked out of the force, Scott? I don’t imagine you could have worked off all that ninety-odd grand, just in doing him favours.’

  ‘He was okay about it, more or less. He told me he’d still come to me for info, and that he’d expect me to get it through Lottie, but he never really did, no’ until this business. To tell you the truth, I half expected tae wind up in the Clyde, but nothin’ happened.’

  ‘No, you idiot,’ Skinner’s laugh was scornful, ‘because the debt was never real! The poker school, where you supposedly lost all that dough. Did it never occur to you that it wasn’t just the first few hands that were rigged in your favour, but that the whole bloody thing was rigged against you, to set you up? Who were the other guys in the school? Did you know them?’

  ‘A couple of them; they were Bazza’s drivers in the taxi business.’

  ‘Then they must have been on bloody good tips, to be able to sit in on such a high-roller card game. You got taken, chum, to the cleaners and back again, just like everyone else who was involved with your friend Mr Brown. Did you really never work any of this out?’

  ‘No. Now you say it, I can see how he done it, but honest, sir, he had me scared shitless most of the time and on a string. He was even the reason I got chucked off the force.’

  ‘What? Are you saying he fed you the booze?’

  ‘It had nothin’ tae do wi’ the booze. The station commander caught me liftin’ evidence against Cec, one time he got arrested for carvin’ up a dope dealer that had crossed the pair of them. I photocopied the witness list. He walked in on me while Ah was doing it, and saw right away what it was about. He gave me a straight choice: either Ah resigned on health grounds and blamed alcoholism, or I’d go down for pervertin’ the course of justice.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘For Lottie’s sake, he said.’

  ‘And who was this station commander, this saviour of yours?’

  ‘Michael Thomas,’ Mann replied. ‘ACC Thomas, he is now. He was a superintendent back then.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Skinner murmured. ‘And what happened to Cec? I don’t recall any serious assault convictions on his record.’

  ‘The charges were dropped anyway. The two key witnesses withdrew their evidence. They must have got to them some other way.’

  ‘Not through you?’

  ‘No. I never knew who they were. Ah never got that far. They must have had another source in the force.’

  Forty-Three

  ‘Do you ever feel like you’re in a movie, or a TV series?’ Lowell Payne asked.

  Neil McIlhenney laughed. ‘All the bloody time. My wife’s an actress, remember. As a matter of fact, she’s just been offered the lead in a new TV series, about a single mother who’s a detective, but it would have meant spending months at a time out in Spain, so she turned it down. Why d’you ask? Are you a frustrated thesp?’

  ‘Hell, no. No, it’s being down here, in this place, where all the names come straight off the telly. Highbury earlier on; now it’s the Elephant and bloody Castle, for God’s sake. Makes me feel like Phil Mitchell.’

  ‘Nah, you’ve got too much hair, mate.’

  ‘Where does the name come from anyway?’

  ‘I’m told by my cockney colleagues that it goes back to one of the worshipful companies that had an elephant with a castle on its back on its coat of arms. Somehow that became the name of a coaching inn on this site, about two hundred and fifty years ago.’

  ‘So it’s got fuck all to do with real elephants, or castles.’

  ‘Absolutely fuck all.’

  The two detectives were standing on the busy thoroughfare they had been discussing, having been dropped off by their driver in the bus lane that ran past the Metropolitan Tabernacle Baptist Church, a great grey pillared buildi
ng.

  ‘Where’s the office?’ the visitor asked.

  ‘On the other side of the road, on top of that shopping complex; that’s what I’m told.’

  Payne looked at the dual carriageway, and at the density of the fast-moving traffic. ‘Crossing that’s going to be fun,’ he complained.

  ‘No. It’s going to be dead easy,’ his companion replied, heading towards a circular junction. At the end of the road was a subway, running under the highway and surfacing through the Elephant and Castle tube station. ‘The office should be just around the corner here,’ he said, as they stepped out into the sunlight once more.

  They walked up a ramp that led into a shopping centre, and found the block without difficulty, and the board in the foyer that listed the tenants, floor by floor.

  ‘There we are,’ McIlhenney declared. ‘Rondar Mail Order Limited, level three, north. Just two floors up.’

  They took the elevator, at Payne’s insistence. ‘I’d an early start, and I am knackered. Buggered if I’m walking when there’s an option.’

  As they stepped out, they saw, to their left, the Rondar logo, emblazoned across double doors of obscured glass. There was no bell, no entrance videophone, so the two officers walked straight through them, into an open space furnished with half a dozen desks and a few tables. At the far end, there were two partitioned areas, affording privacy. They counted five members of staff, all female, all white, all dark-haired, all in their twenties.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Payne whispered, ‘it’s like a room full of Amy Winehouses. I’m sure you don’t have to be Jewish to work here, for that would be illegal, wouldn’t it, but I’m even surer it helps.’

  The woman seated at the desk nearest to the entrance looked up at them. They judged that she was probably the oldest of the five. ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Radnor, please,’ the DCS replied, showing her his warrant card. ‘Police. I’m Chief Superintendent McIlhenney, from the Met, and this is Chief Inspector Payne, from Strathclyde.’

  ‘Aunt Jocelyn’s busy, I’m afraid. She’s making a new product video, and can’t be disturbed.’