But before he was able to get out an expletive-laden putdown, the new face stepped in. Rebecca Summers, a fresh recruit to the new corporate affairs and media team, brought in to give Police Scotland a professional face after some difficult headlines over the Chief going lone ranger and armed police officers prowling the aisles of local supermarkets around the country.
“Well, Mr McGregor,” she said, “we’d love to hear your suggestions. Oh, and if you’ve got a phone number for Fagin or Nancy, I’m sure that would help – who knows, maybe they could help us hit the Bullseye? Now, is that enough literary allusion for you, or can we get back to the serious business of the press briefing?”
Doug opened his mouth to give a witty retort, found he had nothing to throw at the woman now giving him a small, amused smile that almost offset the calm, cold fury that was radiating from her dark brown eyes.
He was dimly aware of a ripple of laughter running through the other reporters, felt his face turning as red as Burns’s neck.
Doug hustled out meekly when the briefing ended, headed back to the Tribune and wrote up the story then got to work trying to forget his humiliation.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that Robbie Alexander, one of the snappers the Tribune used to cover police stories, took a picture of Doug at the perfect moment, mouth hanging open with stunned incredulity, the look of shame written over his face like rouge applied by a five-year-old.
Doug, read the note attached to the print of the picture Robbie had stuck to Doug’s computer, thought you might need a new byline pic. Think this one really captures the inner you. Robbie.
Bastard.
Doug bundled the picture into his drawer, hoping not too many people had seen it, then made a fuss of looking busy on the feature he was writing. He was almost fooling himself when his mobile rang. He frowned when he read the display. No caller ID, which probably meant a call centre trying to give him the good news on the fortune he was owed in unclaimed PPI. Against his better judgment, he answered it, vaguely hoping for someone to take his frustration out on.
“Doug McGregor.”
A woman’s voice. Soft, with a gentle undercurrent of Belfast taking the edge off the consonants and exaggerating the vowels. “Mr McGregor. Yes. Hello. My name’s Rebecca Summers. We, ah, met at the press briefing in Fettes.”
Doug sat up in his chair, felt the heat rising in his cheeks as his mouth dried out. Shit.
“Aye, yes. Yes, we did. You’re the Dickens lover, right?”
She gave the comment a laugh more polite than it deserved. “Yes, that’s me. I just wanted to call to, ah, apologise, if I embarrassed you. The last thing I want to do is get off on the wrong foot with anyone in the press.”
Doug coughed back a laugh in spite of himself. “Ms Summers, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve been a lot more embarrassed than that on jobs before. That said, if you feel you want to make it up to me by giving me an exclusive, then I’m not going to try and stop you.”
A chuckle down the line, a lot more genuine than the first. “It’s Rebecca. And I hardly think you need our help getting splashes Mr McGregor, given the work you did on the Katherine Buchan story last year.”
Doug forced back the sudden image of Katherine Buchan plummeting towards the earth from the top of the Scott Monument, head exploding as she hit the ground below. It had been a hard story to work on, harder still to forget. He still looked up every time he walked past the Monument, imagined what she saw and felt as she fell, the wind screaming in her ears as her heart hammered its last frantic beats in her fragile chest.
“Call me Doug. And I had a little help with that one. Got lucky with a few contacts.”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard you’ve got some very good sources here.”
“I couldn’t possibly comment,” Doug said, his voice hardening. Pleasantries over, here came the main course. Find his source, warn him off.
Another chuckle down the phone, throaty, warm. Doug could imagine those dark eyes flashing with amusement. “Don’t worry, Mr McGregor, I’m not going to tell any stories out of school. Susie already told me all about it. Who do you think gave me your number?”
“I, ah, eh…”
“I can tell you’ve got a few questions. So how about we meet for a coffee? Say Sam’s Cafe on Broughton Road? Maybe three o’clock this afternoon?”
Sam’s Cafe. The same place Doug had first met Susie when he found out about her little mistake with a married senior officer at the office Christmas party.
Christ, how much had Susie told this woman?
“I’ll be there,” Doug said, anxious to get the call over and speak with Susie.
“Great. And Doug, Susie says save yourself a phone call, she’s coming too.”
Before he could think of a reply, Rebecca cut the line, leaving Doug sitting at his desk, lost for words. Again. He was just glad Robbie wasn’t around for another profile picture.
Sam’s Cafe was deserted when Doug arrived, save for a tired-looking woman he knew was called Iris wiping at a table half-heartedly and Susie sitting in the corner with Summers. Doug approached slowly, not sure what to say or do. He felt like he was going for an interview without his normal preparation. He’d had enough time to find one card to play, but he was sure he wouldn’t be holding the best deal in the room. Not a pleasant experience. Normally, it was the other way around.
Susie looked up and smiled a greeting, mischief glittering in her eyes and a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Doug, glad you could make it. I hear you’ve already met Rebecca.”
Doug took Rebecca’s hand and shook it. Small, warm, perfect manicure, strong grip, no jewellery. “Hi,” he said weakly and slid into the seat beside Susie. “So, is someone going to bring me up to speed here or what?”
A brief glance exchanged between Rebecca and Susie. You go.
Rebecca placed her hands on the table in front of her, spreading her fingers. “Susie and I used to work together, Doug, back when we were both down at Galashiels. I got in touch when I got the Police Scotland job in Edinburgh, Susie was good enough to fill me in on the lie of the land with the press around here, though I had a pretty good idea of how things worked from the way the Buchan story played out. Nice work, by the way.”
Doug nodded his head. He wasn’t about to argue. “And let me guess, Susie also told you to watch for the cocky little shit from the Trib who likes to wind up Third Degree?”
“Guilty as charged,” Susie said. “And that’s DI Burns to you, Doug.”
Rebecca leaned forward slightly. “Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea if we met. I want to get to know the usual suspects around here, and you seemed like an obvious place to start. So if you need anything, let me know. Hopefully, me knowing Susie means you won’t treat me like a normal press officer?”
“You mean ignore you completely and go straight to my sources for anything interesting?” Doug replied, regretting how harsh his voice sounded. “No comment. But…” He trailed off, noticing another look between the two women. “I’ll keep you in mind.”
“Good enough,” Rebecca nodded. Slid a card across the table to him. Doug considered it for a moment, then slid it back to her.
“Thanks, but don’t need it,” he said, fishing out his phone and calling up a contact listing. It contained Rebecca’s work numbers, along with her private email address, LinkedIn account and Twitter handles – professional and private. It also had her home phone number and address, both of which were classified. Fairly standard for anyone working for the police. And, just to show off a little, he had added her National Insurance number as well.
“How? How did you…?”
Doug smiled, glad to be back on more familiar territory. “Contacts,” he said, getting back up. “Good to meet you, Ms Summers, I’ll be in touch. Susie.”
“See you later, Doug,” she called as he lef
t.
More as a courtesy to Susie than any real need, Doug called Rebecca on a few stories over the next few days. And as they spoke he found she had a dry sense of humour that he appreciated, and a refreshing scepticism about her bosses. If the line they were trying to spin was shit, she would tell him – off the record, of course.
“There’s no point in selling you shit,” she said. “You won’t run it and won’t respect me for trying in the first place, so why bother? If they want to ignore my advice and make themselves look like morons, so what?”
All of which had culminated in an almost accidental invitation for a drink two nights ago. Doug frowned. Two nights ago. Before…
…before…
He had called for an update on an ongoing sexual assault investigation, getting to the story later than he would have liked because he had spent the bulk of the day covering the desk for Walter. She had sounded tired and frustrated when she answered, so on impulse he had suggested a drink to wind down. They found themselves in an overly fashionable wine bar near the foot of Leith Walk and…
Doug yanked the wheel suddenly, tyres squealing as he slid round the turn-off to the Sleat Peninsula that he had almost missed. Ahead, the road snaked away between the mountains, twisty and narrow, just as Doug liked.
He dropped down a gear and hit the accelerator. Fuck it, he could worry about this later. Right now, there was driving to be done.
20
The corporate affairs and media team for Police Scotland East Division worked out of Fettes down at Crewe Toll, in the building that had once been the headquarters of Lothian and Borders Police. The building hadn’t changed much, apart from the rebranding and usual chess moves as old departments moved to make way for new ones that did more or less the same thing with half the staff and a name twice as long. At its core, it was still a cop shop, which meant that the press, and those who worked with them, were more tolerated than embraced.
Susie could sympathise.
She was sitting with Rebecca in a small office that was part of a refurbished suite for the corporate affairs and media team. It looked like the designer had been given a gift voucher for Ikea and strict instructions to buy the most utilitarian and offensive furniture they could find. Susie was perched on a polished plastic seat, nursing a glass of water, trying to flush the hangover, exhaustion from her stand-off with Burns, caffeine and aftertaste of the morgue out of her mouth. It wasn’t working.
“You okay, Suze?” Rebecca asked, hands wrapped around a cup from which delicate wisps of steam snaked, carrying with them the scent of whatever herbal tea it was that Rebecca had fallen in love with this week. As ever, she looked camera-ready, hair and make-up perfect, her TV lighting-friendly neutral blue business suit hanging off her like it was tailored. Which it might have been: Rebecca loved her labels.
“Yeah,” Susie said, lying. “Fine. Just been a long day, that’s all.”
Rebecca nodded. “I can imagine. First Charlie Montgomery, then the suspicious from the ERI. How did that go, anyway?”
Susie shrugged. She had been lucky, Williams had finished the post-mortem by the time she arrived. Unfortunately, he had insisted on showing her the body, the Y-incision that he had made to scoop out the internal organs freshly sewn up and puckered on the mottled greying flesh of the kid’s chest.
“Fairly routine,” she sighed. “Subject was Daniel Pearson, aged twenty-two. Lived across the water in Rosyth, Fife. Admitted with head injuries two days ago when he tried to get too close with his camera and ended up giving an oncoming tram a header on St Andrew Square. He had a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain.”
She shuddered slightly, the image of the other set of stitches that scrawled across his head flashing across her mind. “He hadn’t regained consciousness since, prognosis was fairly grim.”
“So why the question mark? No chance it was natural causes?” Rebecca asked.
“The nurse who found him said the heart monitor had been disconnected,” Susie replied. “Which, in the event of cardiac arrest, would have tripped an alarm at the nurses’ station in the main ward. But that didn’t happen. Plus, Williams found what he calls petechial haemorrhaging in the eyes.”
She saw Rebecca’s puzzled expression, cocked her head in apology. “Sorry, it’s when the tiny blood vessels in the whites of the eyes rupture and bleed under stress. Classic sign of strangulation or suffocation. Add that to the fact the SOCOs found the kid’s saliva on one of the pillows and bang, instant suspicious death. It’s not conclusive, but…”
Rebecca nodded, scrawling notes on a pad in front of her. “I’ll give the hospital press office a call, see if I can help. What’s your next step?”
“The mother, Diane, has already been interviewed by the local office across in Fife, but I’ll head over and talk to her myself. Father apparently isn’t on the scene, hasn’t been for years.”
Rebecca sighed heavily, shook her head. “What a bloody week,” she said. “With Charlie, Greig and now this, what the hell is going on?”
“Wish I knew,” Susie said. “But I’ll be damned if I let Burns use this as an excuse to keep me away from the Greig case.”
Rebecca looked at her for a moment, a smile playing across her lips. Nothing changed. They had met when she was working in the press office at Galashiels and Susie had been a PC. Rebecca had worked on the local paper, decided to make the leap to media relations when the previous press officer left on maternity leave and didn’t come back.
They were both members of the force running club, taking advantage of working and living in the Borders to run up and down hills in an exercise of controlled masochism. But while Rebecca saw it as a pastime and a more entertaining way to keep fit than trips to the gym or workout DVDs, Susie was always focused on the finish line. She ran to win, and once she decided she was racing, nothing would stop her.
“Speaking of the Greig case,” Susie said slowly, “you spoken to Doug yet?”
“Texted him a while ago, when I heard about your little chat with Burns. That okay?”
“Fine, saves me a job,” Susie said, a half-beat too quickly for Rebecca.
“Look, Susie,” she said. “I know you said there was nothing with you and him, and I believe you. I mean, I know you’re friends, he said that much himself, but if this is too weird, if…”
Susie snorted a laugh that poked a stick into the headache still lurking in the corner of her mind. “Doug? No, Rebecca. Seriously, no. I’m not sure we’re even friends. Truth is, I’m not sure what we are. The Buchan case did something, but romantic? No. Not at all. It’s just…” She flailed for the words. “I’m worried about him, you know?”
Rebecca nodded sympathetically. But she was sure this was more than concern for a friend. The way Doug had looked at the hospital, cored out by shock and disbelief, the way he had sounded on the phone, his normally calm, measured voice stretched tight and thin and off-key by what had happened. She was worried, too. But why? She barely knew him. They were little more than acquaintances. And yet, the other night, when they had got past the professional suspicion and mutual reticence…
Susie’s phone buzzed on the cheap Formica table, loud in the silence. She grabbed it and hit Answer, held it to her ear tight enough that Rebecca could see her knuckles turning white. And she realised in that moment that she was also worried about Susie.
“Drummond.” She straightened in her seat. “Yes, sir. No, sir, I’ve not had the time to review anything yet, too busy getting up to speed with the ERI case. Why?”
She listened, nodded. Then her eyes grew wide, the pupils glittering with almost feverish intensity as she ran an unsteady hand over her face as the colour drained from it.
“Yes, sir. Understood.” She glanced at her watch, a quick, convulsive twitch. “One hour. Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Susie clicked off the phone and laid it on the table, then looked up at
Rebecca, eyes full of questions.
“What?” she asked, torn between curiosity and concern. “Susie, what the hell…?”
“That was Burns,” she said slowly, as though she was digesting the words as she spoke them. “Williams found out what was stuck in Charlie’s mouth.”
She shook her head, chewing her lip, gaze turning inward in the hunt for answers.
“And?” Rebecca prompted, her voice almost a shout. “What?”
“A bullet casing,” Susie said, almost to herself. “Ballistics ran a cross-check due to the unusual nature and calibre of the bullet. You see, it was from a high-velocity rifle. The type snipers use.”
Rebecca rocked back in her chair. “Wait. Snipers. But…”
Susie nodded. “Yes. The casing matched the bullets they dug out of Greig and the wall of his office. Whoever shot him also killed Charming Charlie.” Susie grunted a laugh devoid of humour, dropped her head to her chin and closed her eyes, trying to screen out the screaming questions and think clearly.
“Looks like I’m working both cases, after all.”
21
Harvey Robertson was a traditionalist when it came to his journalism. No sensationalism, no over-egging a story, no short cuts. No exaggeration. Which is why, Doug thought, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he discovered that the “little B&B” wasn’t so little after all.
He was parked in a small layby just down from the main gate, glancing between his sat-nav and the discreet, tasteful sign nestled amongst the foliage of a perfectly manicured hedge, verifying that he hadn’t made a mistake somewhere.
Behind the sign, the hotel it advertised, Robertson’s Retreat, sat like a king on his throne at the top of a gentle slope of lush green lawn that looked as if it could double for a bowling green.
Who knows, Doug thought, maybe it did. Wouldn’t be the biggest surprise of the day so far.
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