Doug didn’t care. He had a duty to tell the truth, and he would, if only to prove that, unlike Harvey, he could still put what was best in front of what was published.
He slammed the car into gear and kicked down on the accelerator, the growing snarl of the engine drowning out the sirens that were rapidly closing in on him.
59
Sending Eddie back to the station to get started on the formal request for Diane Pearson’s patient list, Susie arranged to meet Rebecca at the Mitre, a bar that sat just off the junction of North Bridge and the Royal Mile. She didn’t want to be in the station now, just in case Burns’s good mood changed and he decided she was his pet plaything again.
She broke her normal rule of never drinking during the day and ordered a vodka, soda and lime. Just a single, but she needed something. When Rebecca saw the drink she turned back to the bar and came back with another for Susie and a large wine for herself.
“That bad?” Susie asked.
“Worse,” Rebecca replied, taking a long swig. “Spent most of the morning giving that shit line out to the nationals who have finally woken up to the story, then spent the rest of my time trying to find out a bit more about our leak, Mr Robertson. You?”
Susie went over the call from Hal, the link to the legal firm Montgomery worked for, the visit to Diane. The anger in her eyes when she asked about the divorce flashed across her vision. She chased it with another drink.
“Interesting,” Rebecca said, fishing out her notepad. “That chimes with some of the things I’ve been hearing today.”
“Oh,” Susie said. “How so?”
“Seems Harvey Robertson was quite the reporter in his day. As you know, covered the crime beat before Doug. Surely he’s spoken about him?”
Susie nodded, remembering the reaction when Harvey had phoned the night of Greig’s murder. The relief. “Yeah, he’s spoken about him. Seems like they’re close.”
Rebecca grimaced. “Not the best news. Seems Mr Robertson was tight with a lot of the legal firms in the city, had a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours sort of deal with a few of them, including Charlie’s firm. Landed him in trouble a couple of times. Formal complaints about potentially prejudicing trials with the release of sensitive information, that sort of thing.”
Susie swilled a mouthful of her drink against her tongue, enjoying the harsh bite of the vodka. “Is that the link we’ve been looking for?” she asked. “Robertson works at the Tribune, he’s linked to Montgomery, Montgomery’s firm is tied up in the Pearson case?”
“It’s possible, but it’s thin,” Rebecca replied. “It’s all third party. And besides, Harvey was on the crime beat before Greig was editor, so there’s no direct connection there.”
Susie murmured her agreement. It was sketchy, but it was the best they had. Damn, but it was frustrating. It was like feeling a familiar object blindfolded, you knew what was meant to be there but the information was scrambled, making it unfamiliar, alien.
Her phone startled her from her thoughts. She pulled it from her bag, expecting it to be Eddie. Felt a dull dread when she saw Burns’s caller ID flashing on the screen.
“Sir? How can I help?”
Rebecca watched as the colour drained from Susie’s face, her mouth dropping open as the stress rash started to blossom on her chest. She murmured a “Yes, sir”, listened, then followed it with a “No, sir. Of course, sir. I’m on my way, sir.”
She clicked off the call, looked at Rebecca, then downed her drink and moved to the second.
“Susie? Susie, what the hell…? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, what?”
Susie blinked, looked at her. When she spoke her voice was small, casual, as if she was reading out the weather from the newspaper and not shaking the world by its foundations.
“That was Burns,” she said. “They’ve found Gavin Pearson. On the Isle of Skye, at Harvey Robertson’s hotel. Dead. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rebecca whispered, numbness settling into her like a shroud. “What about Doug? Is he…? Did he…?”
“Doug?” Susie said, an edge of surprise in her voice. “No sign of him at the scene, he must still be on the road down.”
Rebecca frowned. “So where the hell is he? And why isn’t he taking calls?”
“Good questions,” Susie said.
60
Doug was passing Loch Cluanie when the barrier he had thrown up against what had happened started to crack. It was small things at first: he started pumping his grip on the wheel uncontrollably, felt flushes of sweat. The thought of Pearson leering over him flashed in his mind, the tickle of his fetid breath as he whispered in his ear, the laboured, rasping breathing as he charged at Doug.
The horrible, empty void of the gun’s barrel as he pointed it in his face. The confetti-like spray of blood and brains as he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, his face horribly calm.
Doug pulled into a layby, leaned out of the car and vomited, the strain sending a bolt of agony lancing through his skull where Pearson had pistol-whipped him. He noticed there was blood in the vomit, dark, almost black, and he remembered his hand slipping into Greig’s widening pool of blood after Pearson had shot him.
The tears burst through the barrier, sweeping the last of it away, and he fell out of the car, sobbing. Crouched on his knees, a sorrow too big to get past his throat, silently screaming and gagging as he rocked back and forward, everything he had seen and learned hammering through his mind, clamouring to be acknowledged and accepted.
Greig being murdered in front of him. Esther, make-up plastered across her face like war paint as she smiled and forced him to eat breakfast, focusing on not thinking about the cancer that was slowly stealing through her body, rotting her from within.
Harvey, greeting him like an old friend, lying through his teeth and making a mockery of everything he had taught him. What made it worse was he genuinely thought he was doing the right thing, getting Doug out of the way of Pearson’s rampage by inviting him up to Skye, compounding one lie with another. It also gave him the added bonus of making sure Doug wasn’t poking around things he shouldn’t, such as the Tribune’s library.
According to the letter Pearson had left in the boot – written by Diane Pearson – she and Greig had begun an affair around a month after he started writing articles about Gavin and her. Greig had found the couple easily enough – there was a lot of focus on homecoming troops at the time Desert Storm ended, and it was easy enough to track down a young family, especially with the aid of a few contacts in the military he’d built up during the war itself.
Doug could see how it would have happened: a stressed young wife, confronted by a husband who was now a stranger, his health failing for reasons no-one could understand or acknowledge. Enter the charming young journalist with a willing ear, a sympathetic nature and vows to use the power of the press to do whatever he could to help them.
The affair lasted as long as the articles did, Greig apparently professing his love, Diane reciprocating. They were going to be together, start a new life, a fresh beginning. Finally free, the letter said in the breathless prose of someone who had fallen in love with the ideal of love. We’d be together, a relationship not built on the need to survive, the need to fight whatever comes next. Love.
Doug looked up for a moment, wiping away his tears. Shook his head and laughed bitterly. Because that was when fate decided to twist the knife – or the beer bottle.
Before Greig and Diane had the chance to run off and start their new life together, Gavin collided with Martin Everett in the nightclub. According to what was in the boot, it happened very differently to the way it had been described in the court copy and the “missing” Tribune article.
The true story was contained in the battered old reporter’s notepad, scrawled across the pages in shorthand. Doug didn’t need to see
the reporter’s name in the cover to know who it belonged to. After all these years, he knew Harvey’s pad and handwriting well enough.
Interview with Gavin Pearson, the heading read, the story unfolding on the page below.
He was hopped up on E or something, I could tell that the moment I saw him. He was on the dance floor, top off, bounding up and down as if the floor was a trampoline. I was heading for him, to get him to cool down, when he knocked into a girl, caught her with his elbow. She went down like a ton of shit, the bottle she was holding dropping with her, her boyfriend jumping onto Everett and laying in to him. I didn’t blame him. I let it go just long enough to teach the little shit a lesson, then waded in, pulling the crowd apart. The boyfriend didn’t need much persuading to back off, honour was satisfied at that point, but when I grabbed for Everett, he lashed out with the girl’s broken bottle. His eyes were wide and manic, glinting in the flashing lights of the dance floor. I felt the heat of the room rise, thought of being back in the desert, wished I was. He came for me again and I dodged the bottle, felt it whistle past me. Too many people jostling for a look, no way to take it outside so I closed in on him, trying to take the bottle away. I grabbed his hand, tried to make him let go, but he twisted away, juiced up by whatever he was on. For a moment, I thought he’d got me with the bottle, the pain in my hand was so severe. But he hadn’t, it was just my body letting me down again. He lunged again, and I blocked with my elbow, didn’t realise I’d forced the bottle back into his neck until he hit the floor and the bleeding started.
Doug shook his head, hawked back and spat a dark wad of blood onto the gravel of the layby. Looked at it for a long moment. It was a clear example of self-defence, any jury would have seen that.
If they’d been allowed to.
Which is where Harvey came in. Doug could see it all too clearly now. Greig heard about Everett’s death. Saw his chance. Went to Harvey, pleading for his help. Help to get this young, traumatised girl away from the life of pain and misery she was trapped in, with a husband who was falling apart and had already shown a history of violence. Help her start anew with the love of her life. So how about it? Of course, he wasn’t asking Harvey to help him prejudice the case, that would be illegal, but surely with all his court dealings he knew someone who could ensure justice would be served?
And so, Harvey agreed. Why else would he interview the accused in a murder trial? Doug wondered for a moment how Harvey had got the interview with a man accused of murder in the first place. It was a hell of an exclusive, but it was also worthless. No way it could be run before or during the trial.
He heard Harvey’s voice in his head. You never were good at the big picture. What was the first thing I taught you? Look for the why in every story. He closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head. Of course. He wasn’t interviewing him for the Tribune, he was interviewing him for Greig. No doubt on the promise of a favour to Charlie Montgomery.
Why? To see how they could maximise his sentence. Pearson clearly didn’t understand that rather than being helped, he was actually being used to orchestrate his own downfall. It was sickeningly easy to imagine how they did it – Greig persuading Pearson to talk to Harvey, to make sure he got the facts right at the trial. And why wouldn’t Pearson believe him? After all, this was the man who had helped tell his story. As far as he was concerned, he was a friend, not the man who was fucking his wife behind his back and plotting a new life with her.
Doug bunched a fist, slammed it down on the gravel surface of the car park. Yelped at the pain, then tightened his fist on it, grabbing it, using it to focus.
According to notes in the back of his pad, Harvey made sure Greig paid for his services. Stapled to the back cover, Doug found a copy of Harvey’s redundancy letter. It was glowing in its praise. Eyewatering in the details of the lump sum he would receive. It was signed by Jonathan Greig, the date left open, to be filled out and cashed in at Harvey’s discretion.
Harvey evidently put Greig in touch with Charming Charlie, who arranged everything, Pearson no doubt delighted that his friends at the Tribune were lining up a top legal firm to help him. Charlie saw to it that witness statements were discounted or ruled out as unreliable, made sure anything relating to Gavin’s medical problems was quietly forgotten or deemed classified or irrelevant, the version of events contained in Harvey’s notepad quietly lost.
Doug didn’t know for sure, but he guessed the military would have been quite happy to help with that. Gulf War Illness – or Syndrome as it was being called at the time – was just starting to be a big issue and they were in full denial mode.
With a defence as hostile as Gavin’s, the outcome of the trial was never in doubt, and he was sentenced to twenty years. So the fairy tale was complete. The monster went to prison, Diane and Greig were free to start their new life together.
And then she found out she was pregnant.
Diane’s letter, stained with tears, described Greig’s reaction. He called her everything from a whore to a stupid bitch. She tried to assure him the child was his – theirs – but he refused to believe it, couldn’t run the risk that he was bringing up another man’s child.
Doug could smell cold feet a mile off. It was all romance and heat-of-the-moment when it was a dream, but with Pearson out of the picture and a baby on the way, romance gave way to harsh reality. And with his career on the up – he had just made deputy editor at the time – Greig wasn’t for rocking the boat, especially with an angry soon-to-be ex waiting in the wings, ready to cry infidelity as grounds for divorce unless she got a juicy settlement. So Harvey stepped in – either through guilt or self-preservation, Doug couldn’t tell – and brokered a second deal, with Greig promising maintenance money to take care of Diane and the kid “just in case it was his”. But he cut all contact, leaving Diane Pearson to pick up the wreckage of her life.
Doug thought back to the conference room, the sound of Greig’s head cracking open as he collapsed onto the table. It didn’t bother him as much any more.
He leaned back against the car, knocking his head against the door panel, found it strangely comforting. Heard Harvey again: Look for the why in every story.
He knew the why now. It was all in the inside cover of Harvey’s pad. In the note he had scrawled there for Pearson before he sent it to him. After Danny’s accident, Harvey had got in touch with Greig, seeing if he was okay. After all, he was the only one who knew he had a son in the first place. Greig’s brutal response – “Good riddance to the defective little fuck. That’s one less bill I have to pay every month.” – triggered something inside Harvey.
I’m sorry, Harvey had written, his longhand fluid, elegant, a sharp contrast to the jutting, jagged shorthand that filled the rest of the pages of the book. I should have seen what he was sooner. I know it’s of little comfort now, but this notepad gives you everything you need to expose Greig, Montgomery and, yes me, for what we’ve done to you. I don’t care what you do to me any more, I have losses far worse to come, but if you want justice – or even revenge – then here’s how. And Greig deserves it. I have no children of my own, but I think I know what it feels likes to be a father, to see a man you consider your son and be proud of him. For the way he treated your son – yours, not his, no matter what any DNA tests might say – he deserves it.
The letter with Harvey’s pad, from Diane to Gavin, showed Greig’s reaction to Danny’s accident when he spoke with her hadn’t been much kinder:
He made me talk first. When I told him about Danny, he asked, “What do you want me to do? I provided for him, the day care isn’t cheap, after all. And it sounds like this has done you a favour.”
His own son, and he treated him like a problem that had been solved. I slammed the phone down, I wasn’t going to let the bastard hear me cry, then I smashed it off the wall. Bastard. I hope he dies screaming.
Doug agreed. Pity Pearson’s first shot had taken out most of his th
roat.
No, not first shot, second.
Doug straightened up. There was still something about that nagging at him. That, and something about the sight of Pearson’s hands – huge, gnarled, ruined things. He shook his head, forced himself to his feet. Wiped at his face and forced himself to breathe normally.
Later, he could worry about that later. He had plenty of thinking time, he was still four hours from home. Four hours. Plenty of time for him to think about what he was going to ask Diane Pearson.
He didn’t know how she was going to react when he met her. But he knew he couldn’t avoid it. Gavin Pearson had taken that choice from him he moment he blew his brains out in front of him.
61
Stevie Leith’s problems didn’t bother Rab much; as far as he was concerned, drug dealers were nothing more than parasites feeding off others’ weakness. What did bother him was the company Stevie kept – and the names he knew.
After the call from Doug, Rab had phoned round some people. As ever, Doug’s instincts were right, a former soldier with firearms expertise and a criminal record attracted a certain amount of attention in some circles, especially if said former soldier was willing to use his skills to make some money and didn’t mind the prospect of returning to the prison he’d just got out of.
In Rab’s experience, ex-soldiers wanting to make money in that way weren’t bothered by the risks – and prison was just another form of barracks to them.
However, it looked like Gavin Pearson had been a different kind of animal. According to Rab’s contacts, no-one matching his description or skill set ever made themselves available for work. He seemed to have been released from prison and quietly vanished.
That was, until he stepped out of the shadows one night and beat the shit out of three guys who were looking to rip off some junkie who occasionally did some dealing for Dessie Banks. According to the story Rab had been told, the kid, who, given what he was doing must have been mentally deficient, struck a deal in a New Town nightclub. It was a gay club, known to be fairly relaxed; most of the problems happened when the customers hit the streets and were met with some homophobic little shits who were jacked up on booze and pack mentality. So maybe Dessie’s dealer got careless, thought he was safe. Didn’t make up for his stupidity, though. His three new friends asked for speed, insisted they wanted to make the deal outside the club in case there were security cameras nearby. The stupid twat agreed, allowed himself to be led outside and down a small alley next to the club. Predictably, he made the deal, handed over the drugs and they proceeded to pay him by trying to break every bone in his body.
The Storm Page 23
