‘Turn it up,’ I said.
‘… have yet to comment on whether they are considering this terrorist-related activity. Neighbours I have spoken to, who have been evacuated from their homes, have been informed by police that some kind of improvised device has been identified within the property in this quiet street on the outskirts of Edinburgh. A disposal team has been brought in from the armed forces, who are on scene as we speak.’
‘Terrorists in Edinburgh? Do you think they’re lost?’ said Mandy, turning down the volume.
I forced a chuckle. ‘Listen, I’m not feeling great, I think I’ll head home.’
‘You do look pretty pale, Sarge. Don’t worry, if Morgan needs any help writing his case up, I’ll give him a hand. You feel better.’
‘Thanks Mandy,’ I said and fetched my phone from the office. Only one message and it was from Marcella, confirming details for the fireworks tonight. I considered sending a message to Alyson. I needed to know what was going on, but it would not have been a good idea. If she had anything she wanted to tell me, she’d get in touch.
I tried to put it out of my mind, and for a while I did. I’d considered cancelling the evening with Marcella, thinking there was no way I’d be any kind of company at all. But in the end, I decided it might distract me. I was right.
Rather than pay for tickets to watch the fireworks officially from Princess Street Gardens, Marcella took me to a spot on the Mound you could watch for free. After all, there was barely a spot in the whole of the city you couldn’t watch from. She brought two blankets, one to sit on and another to huddle under. We sat on the small steps outside of the New College university building and shared a bottle of wine she’d brought, along with plastic tumblers. I was grateful for the distraction, the wine and the blanket. Summer in Edinburgh ends abruptly at the close of August.
I stopped checking my phone after Marcella had given me a bit of a frown when I should have been watching the incredible display above my head. It had only just gone dark when they’d started the performance, but now fully night-time as it drew to a dramatic close. The concussion of explosions reverberated off the buildings around us and sent a physical pressure through your ribcage. The display built and built to a great crescendo and we were left clapping with several others who had stopped in their travels to watch. From our elevated position, you could just about see the crowd gathered in the gardens, but you could certainly hear them, roaring and clapping like a football crowd. We finished our wine and headed to my place.
I thought about what I’d say if Alyson was at home, but the place was in darkness as we entered. I began making us something to eat in the kitchen, but after a long kiss, it was abandoned and we went straight to bed.
I dreamt about a church I couldn’t find the exit to. Two nuns huddled together on one of the pews, gripping each other’s arms and laughing at my failure to escape the place. The hymn board grew an extra number every time I looked at it. As I grew more and more anxious and frustrated, the nuns became more excited. They were clapping and banging their hands off the backrest of the pew in front of them. They were banging harder and harder and there were fireworks going off outside, exploding at the same point the nun’s hands crashed into the pew, over and over.
‘Don. Don, wake up!’
I was being shaken hard and sat up in a panic. Marcella looked terrified. Then I heard why – great thuds sounded from the front door in groups of three. It wasn’t clear if it was knocking or someone trying to force their way in. I jumped out of bed before realising I was naked and doubled back to tangle my way into my jeans as the door crashed and crashed. I jogged down the hall, trying to secure the buttons of the jeans. I paused at the door but the three bangs rang out again, I twisted the snib and pulled the door wide.
I was half-expecting to be rushed at after all the frantic banging, but three large men stood calmly outside.
‘Donald Colyear?’ the middle one asked.
‘Uh, yes. That’s right.’
‘You’re to come with us.’
‘What?’ I asked, trying to judge the time by the light outside. All I knew was that it was early.
I squinted as the middle one held out his warrant card. DC Richmond. The other two had their cards on lanyards around their necks. All of them looked gravely serious.
‘What’s this? I mean, I’m not, under arrest or anything?’
‘Only if you show resistance. So, if I were you, I’d find some shoes, sharpish.’
‘Uh, fine. I’ll need a minute. I need to find a shirt.’ Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought as I went back inside, the three detectives following behind.
‘Don, what’s going on?’ Marcella said, wrapped in one of my shirts, pulling at the bottom to cover herself.
I circled around her and grabbed a T-shirt from the floor of the bedroom and rooted around for another sock that matched the one I was holding. ‘It’s OK. It’s just a work thing. I’ll need to head out.’
‘We need to go, right now,’ said one of the other two suits in the hall.
I pulled on trainers and kissed Marcella’s concerned cheek. ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,’ I lied.
I sat in the back of the unmarked car with DC Richmond who stared rigidly forward. I thought about asking what this was about, but who was I kidding? The driver pulled onto Dundas street, almost at a skid and punched the accelerator, cutting through a light that had gone red a few seconds before. The blast of a horn sounded behind us.
I didn’t know where we were going or who awaited me at the end of this journey, but I was going nowhere good and I would be speaking to nobody friendly. I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my phone. I had no keys, no wallet. I felt the desperation of the many criminals I’d arrested over the years. You can see it their faces; the options available to them seeming to disappear one by one. On a fair few occasions, this would result in tears from men who considered themselves hard, seasoned. I felt something like grief rising in my chest.
Leith. We were heading down Easter Road, going to Leith.
‘Come on, fuck sake,’ the driver muttered as a long line of traffic was queueing in front of us. He revved the engine a few times and then cut onto the opposite carriage, overtaking the line and pulling in as a car braked hard, with lights flashing and horn blaring.
‘Jesus. What’s the rush?’ I said, but nobody spoke.
We arrived at Leith station a minute later. My door was opened by the driver and I stepped out.
‘This way,’ Richmond said and I walked behind him, the other two following close behind.
‘Dead man walking,’ I said under my breath.
Inside, the station smelled as they all do, musty with the hanging notes of detergent. We walked straight past the charge bar, a duty officer scribbling into a book at the desk and barely lifting his eyes. Then we were climbing stairs and pushing through a swing door before Richmond stopped. He nodded at the door in front of me now which had a printed sheet of A4 taped to it.
Incident Room
Authorised Entry Only
I took a breath, pushed and stepped into a room far bigger than I’d expected. I stopped in my tracks. There must have been twenty people, all of them silent, having just stopped whatever task they had been performing to look at me. The first person to move was a lady from the back: tall, angular and pissed-off.
‘Sergeant Colyear?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said. I didn’t know her rank, but it was a safe assumption and the safe choice.
‘Get the fuck over here and start explaining yourself.’
It was at that moment I saw Alyson, standing slightly behind this woman. She was the only person in the room not looking at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Your Call
There was a large monitor on one wall. The screen showed an image of a man from the shoulders up. It was a capture from some kind of work identification card. His name was printed underneath, ‘Michael Halfpenny’. Beside it was a CCTV still, a sli
ghtly blurry image, of a figure that could be anyone, except next to this ID card, it was a convincing match.
DCI Kate Templeton looked me up and down as I walked towards her. She wore no identification and there was no marker on her desk, but I had no doubt this was Alyson’s boss. She was tall, sharply dressed and entirely terrifying. Her eyes were wide, her jaw tense. She stood with her weight on one hip, arms folded at her chest. I felt every eye in the room on me.
‘You two, sit,’ she said pointing at a couple of chairs at her desk directing Alyson and myself to them. ‘And the rest of you get back to fucking work,’ she yelled. There was an immediate break in the atmosphere, which I was grateful for.
Kate sat on the desk and checked her watch. I had the briefest eye exchange with Alyson as I lowered myself into my chair and tried to hide the shaking of my hands. There must have been a window open somewhere as a cool breeze caught the sweat on the back of my neck.
‘You’re a community sergeant here in Edinburgh?’ Kate asked. Her voice was calm, but this felt like a feint before a right hook.
‘That’s right, ma’am. I work out of Drylaw.’
‘And you know Alyson from the training college.’
This was a statement, but I confirmed it to be correct.
‘And for some time now you’ve taken it upon yourself to be trampling shit-covered footprints all over my investigation.’
There was the hook. I said nothing.
Kate checked her watch again. ‘I’ve had one version of events from DC Kane, but I want to hear it from you. At what point did she become aware of your interference?’
‘Yesterday, ma’am. I’d stumbled across a few things while I was—’
‘Fucking around with my double-murder investigation.’
‘… and I felt it was, way beyond time to come clean and explain things to Alyson. I swear she knew nothing about it until moments before we arrived at the address in Portobello.’
I looked at Alyson, she stared straight ahead. I wondered how much trouble she was in. I looked around the room and it was clear every one of these people were mechanically approximating work and were instead listening intently.
Again, Kate looked at her watch. ‘Why?’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Why did you decide to start interfering in a CID investigation? I mean, you must have realised you’d be found out at some stage? And that when you were found out you would be looking at dismissal at the very least, but most likely, facing criminal charges? I started making a list while we were waiting for you to arrive – the charges you’re facing. Everything from interfering with witnesses and neglect of duty to perverting the course of justice. So, why?’
‘I …’ I started, but nothing was coming. Alyson was looking at me now. She was probably thinking don’t mention the old man, don’t you fucking do it. ‘I had the feeling that whoever was responsible wasn’t finished. I had a theory that the killings were somehow a message. The first with the eyes, then the ears. Like the three wise monkeys.’
‘You think that didn’t occur to us? You thought that the team looking into these killings were what? Inept? That without Sergeant Donald Colyear they couldn’t possibly hope to identify the killer?’
Her voice was ramping up now. She had taken my actions as a personal sleight and I had to be very careful now.
‘No, ma’am. Not at all. It’s just—’
‘It’s just what, Sergeant? Come on, fucking spit it out, we haven’t got long.’ She checked her watch again.
‘I felt like another killing was imminent, ma’am, and that if there was even the tiniest possibility that I could help, that I was morally obligated to do just that. Yes, I knew I was putting my job at risk and I also knew what a shitty thing I was doing to Alyson, but if another child ended up—’
‘Oh, you thought you were helping?’ she said with a small laugh. ‘Do you—do you have any idea of what’s involved with investigating a major crime? Do you understand the legal framework that exists around the collection of evidence?’
As much trouble as I was in, some anger rose into my face. ‘I do have some experience with—’
‘I know what experience you have, Sergeant. Unlike you, I don’t run around shooting from the hip. I looked you up and I’m aware of that cluster-fuck you got yourself wrapped up in last year. As I understand it, a team of detectives had to pick that whole thing apart in the Highlands, cleaning up your mess.’
This was unfair. I knew I was done here and it took a lot of strength to just sit here and take it. Why should I if I was fucked anyway?
‘How many of my witnesses did you speak to?’
I took a deep breath and released it. ‘I’m not sure, four or five.’
‘Can I see the statements you took?’
‘I … I didn’t exactly take statements.’
‘No? So where is your evidence? Where is your legal chain to show how you ended up at that address in Portobello? At least you had some corroboration? Someone to testify that these voluntary outbursts you collected were fairly obtained? That they said what you might claim in court they did?’
Again, I released a breath. ‘No, ma’am.’
‘“No, ma’am.” No, of course fucking not.’ She stood and scratched at her head with both hands. ‘Right, you listen to me very carefully. I intend to throw the book at you, the whole fucking shelf, but right now, as much as it fucking pains me, we need your … cooperation.’
I looked at Alyson, she was nodding.
‘What does that mean? Cooperation?’
‘It means for the time being you are still an officer of Police Scotland and you’ll do as you’re fucking told,’ Kate snapped. She was beckoning someone over from behind me. ‘Are we all set up?’
‘Yes ma’am. Good to go,’ the man said. He was wearing headphones.
‘I make it exactly half-past. What do you have?’
‘Same,’ he said. Then the phone on Kate’s desk began ringing.
‘OK everyone, this is it. I want absolute silence. Are you ready, Alyson?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said and sat forward in her chair.
Kate pressed the button to activate the speaker and then answered. ‘DCI Templeton,’ she said.
‘Ma’am, I have your call,’ the voice on the line said.
‘Thank you, put it through.’
There was a crackle from the speaker and then the faint sound of breathing.
‘Is that Mr Halfpenny?’
‘What the hell,’ I breathed and looked at Alyson. She nodded once.
There followed a few seconds of the breathing through the speaker and then the reply came.
‘First, I should point out that it’s pointless to trace this call, though I know it won’t stop you trying. I have it looped through a dozen VPNs and even if you did untangle it, it’s a burner phone that will be in pieces seconds after we end this call. Now, are the officers there?’ The voice was low and cracked, as if the man talking was suffering a sore throat.
‘They are, they’re listening now,’ said Kate. She looked down at the phone, her arms still folded.
‘If I’m lied to once more, I’ll know and I will hang up immediately.’
‘I understand that, Michael. I already gave you my word. You just caught us a little unaware this morning. The two officers who attended your house are here.’
There was another pause and then: ‘To whom am I speaking?’ Michael Halfpenny said.
Kate nodded at Alyson.
‘This is DC Alyson Kane.’
‘You are the female officer who came to my door yesterday?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And who was with you?’
I felt my pulse spike, everyone listening to what I was going to say. ‘Uh, Sergeant Don Colyear,’ I said.
‘Well DC Kane and Sergeant Colyear, I trust the surprise I left for you didn’t work out?’
‘If you mean the device we had dismantled, then yes, I’m sorry to tell you we spo
tted it in time,’ Alyson said.
‘More’s the pity. My question to you is this: how did you come to be at my door?’
Alyson looked to Kate, but she was simply urged to respond by a wave of the hand. She leaned forward to the speaker and said, ‘Diligent police work, Mr Halfpenny.’
There was a muffled laugh from the speaker.
‘What was it, specifically, that brought you to my door?’
Now Kate was waving a hand at me.
‘I had an interesting conversation with an ex-janitor,’ I said.
‘Interesting, how?’
‘I asked him about a blonde priest. He wasn’t keen to talk, but I was … persuasive.’
‘And what did this janitor tell you?’
I didn’t want to lay the events out on the table, it went against how I’d normally treat a suspect, but Kate was turning her hand over and over.
‘He told me about something he saw, or may have. This priest and a little boy.’
‘Explain, “may have”.’
‘His story went something along the lines of: one afternoon he was returning to his storage cupboard. There he saw a priest, not fully dressed, and a little boy who seemed very frightened. He said he couldn’t be sure but—’
The laughing from the speaker made us all sit up a little straighter. It was as if it were coming from a different person. It was high-pitched, maniacal.
‘Is that the story he told?’ he said through the laugh. There was a short pause and then he was back, completely composed once more. ‘I suppose there’s some truth to it. Shall I tell you what actually happened?’
Kate was nodding.
‘Please do, Michael,’ I said.
There was the sound of him drinking something and some crackling and breathing. I had the impression he was settling himself down to sit.
‘That wasn’t the first time Father Stephen Livingston molested me. No, there were maybe half a dozen previous incidents. But this was the first time someone witnessed it. You know, I once tried to tell one of the nuns at the school, and was beaten to within an inch of my life for my “seditious lies”. When I saw that man standing in the open door, I knew that it was over. I knew that the beast couldn’t hurt me anymore.
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