Bred in the Bone (22 page)

And suddenly Jasmine thought she understood why

She let all the parts of her body move as one, a single motion uniting her eye, her lungs, her arms, her index finger.

Plink.

Dead centre.

‘
Beware the vengeance of a patient man. That’s what Stevie always said. Didn’t he, Sheila?
’

Why that prompt? Why her reluctance to agree? It couldn’t have been that Stevie never said it; that would have been simple to dispute.

She kept with the motion, stayed fluid, held the rhythm.

Plink.

Dead centre.

A sack to blind him and a rope to restrain him. ‘
Hatchets and hammers . . . Even a sword
.’ Beaten and broken and stabbed until his assailants assumed he was dead: it was hard to imagine such a horrible, brutal, sustained and vicious attack; easy to imagine a thirst for retribution.

When Stevie learned Fallan had shown up still alive two years ago, he must have been terrified. Sheila too.

Breathe. Squeeze.

Plink.

Dead centre.

Now Jasmine finally understood what was wrong; what it was about Sheila that hinted all was not as it should be.

She wasn’t angry at Fallan.

Throughout their entire discourse, the person she should have borne the most hatred had failed to spark her ire, and Jasmine could think of only one reason why that should be. In light of all that had gone before, and in the face of so much hard evidence, it couldn’t merely be gut feeling or instinct that caused her to harbour any doubts.

Sheila Fullerton had something more solid than that.

From on High

Beano appeared at Catherine’s office door, an apologetic, if frustrated look on his face, and, significantly, nothing in his hands. She checked her watch: it had been a good hour and a half since she sent him on this errand, and if she had been aware of how long had passed she might have sent out a search party.

‘I can’t find it,’ he told her.

Catherine was used to hearing this from Duncan and Fraser, whose efforts to locate whatever they had lost seldom extended beyond the reach of their arms, or looking in more than one place. Beano, she knew, was at the other end of the scale. He was as diligently resourceful as he was boyishly reluctant to disappoint, plus his familiarity with the morgue where old case files were stored was second to none these days. Over the past week, he had spent so much time down in the depths that they ought to start calling him Gollum.

‘Shit.’

‘I searched among the files from around the time of Sheehan’s death too, in case it had been taken out and put back around then, but no dice.’

Catherine had only very occasionally seen the inside of the morgue, and had been vaguely reminded of the closing image in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. The materials pertaining to thousands upon thousands of closed and prosecuted cases were boxed up and stacked in no particular order, just wherever somebody had found a space. There were clusters and patterns: rows and stacks reflecting some kind of chronology regarding when they were placed there, but there was no preordained system of organisation. Plus, if somebody had for instance taken a 1995 box out ten years later, it would more likely have been returned among the 2005 files rather than put back where it had been found.

‘I can go back and keep looking,’ he offered. ‘I just wanted to check whether you’d prefer I did that, because it might be a waste of time and there might be something else . . .’

‘No, no, you could be there for ever. And you’re right: there is something else I need you to do. I want you to go back and take another look at Fallan’s and Fullerton’s computers. We weren’t looking for anything related to Brenda Sheehan before, so we might have missed—’

‘I’m all over it,’ he replied, scurrying away.

Dear Lord, she thought, please don’t let Beano ever grow up and get a life. He’s far too useful. But not infallible, unfortunately: she had sent him to retrieve the Julie Muir case files.

Catherine picked up the phone and dialled Moira Clark. She wasn’t sure whether her old boss had any direct involvement in the Muir investigation, but if not, chances were she’d at least know who did.

Moira answered after eight or nine rings, just before Catherine was about to give up. Her voice came through against the sound of dozens of voices reverberating in the background, and Catherine pictured her in the main lobby at the Scottish Parliament, fetching her mobile out of that cornucopian shoulder bag she carried.

‘Catherine,’ she said. ‘Good to hear from you, my dear, but whatever it is I’m afraid you’ll have to make it quick.’

Catherine was ready for this. She was just grateful to have Moira even answer the phone these days. The woman was still on the committee for bloody everything, but on top of that was increasingly involved in consultations at Holyrood. Given that the Justice Minister had her on speed-dial, it seemed remarkable she would let Catherine clog up her line, but that was Moira for you. She was the kind of woman who would keep the
First
Minister on hold while she finished giving advice to a probationer.

‘Sorry, I hope I’m not disturbing you. Are you at a conference?’

‘No, I’m at Terminal Five going my holidays and I’m in the queue to board.’

Catherine knew she could skip the small talk.

‘I need to know about a murder from before my time. Julie Muir.
She was strangled by a guy named Teddy Sheehan. We can’t find the files.’

She heard Moira let out a dry laugh, recognising the complaint.

‘Do you remember the case?’

‘Yes. The girl had got off a train at Capletmuir station on a Saturday night.’

‘That’s the one. Do you know who I can talk to about it?’

‘Well, I know who worked it. Who you can talk to might be a wee tad more delicate.’

There was a mordant amusement in Moira’s tone, forewarning some complication that invoked her sympathy but which nevertheless, as a connoisseur of police irony, she couldn’t help but savour.

‘Oh God. What?’

‘It was one of the first murder inquiries to feature the talents of a promising young CID prospect by the name of Mitchell Drummond. Whatever happened to him, eh?’

Catherine winced. Drummond was the Deputy Chief Constable, and the polar opposite of Moira: the type of self-important autocrat who, even if he did have time to talk to you, might not answer the phone in order to underline just how busy he was.

‘Oh God. Please tell me you remember who
else
was working the investigation.’

‘Aye. That’s where it gets worse. Drummond was riding shotgun with Bob Cairns.’

Catherine was on her way upstairs towards the DCC’s office when she encountered Beano heading down in the opposite direction, carrying Stevie Fullerton’s laptop. By her watch he should have been off shift half an hour ago.

‘Where are you going with that?’ she asked. ‘Actually, more to the point, where have you
been
with it?’

He arched his brows, like he knew the answer wouldn’t please her.

‘Had to get it back from LOCUST. Thought I’d nip up so it’s where I need it when I’m back on-shift. They were all over it like, well, locusts.’

He gave her an apologetic smile, barely hoping that it would stem the tide of outrage.

Maybe it was Beano’s expression, or maybe it was the realisation she had had this conversation with Abercorn too often already, but something made her decide she wouldn’t rise to it this time. She needed her head to be in the right place for this meeting.

‘Did Abercorn give you the “it was sent to us by mistake” patter? Because that didn’t wash the last time.’

‘I didn’t see Abercorn. I spoke to Paul Clayton, and he got snotty on Abercorn’s behalf instead. It’s nice to see that they delegate in that department.’

‘What did he say?’

‘A quality whine about us not sharing with the other children: how we couldn’t expect to have a senior drug dealer’s computer at our disposal without them champing at the bit. To be fair, we’d had the thing for days.’

‘Aye, and if we’d found anything of interest we’d have forwarded it. Eventually,’ she added, with a hint of a smirk. ‘Did he put up a fight about handing it back?’

‘No. Just seemed peeved that they had needed to come over and thieve it. Understandable, given how generous they are whenever they happen upon resources and intelligence.’

‘They must have been finished with it then. I can’t think what they were hoping to find: Fullerton was too careful to store anything juicy on a computer that could be traced to him.’

‘It wasn’t anything juicy about Fullerton they were checking for,’ Beano told her. ‘It was anything juicy about LOCUST. Clayton said the brass are always shitting themselves in case anything ever comes out about how they do business.’

‘Letting Off Criminals Under Secret Trades.’

‘So ever since we went into Fullerton’s house, they’ve been getting pressure from above to make sure nothing damaging leaks out.’

‘If they’re happy to give back the laptop, that means they can’t have found anything compromising.’

‘Aye. Or else they’ve deleted it.’

Beano hurried on down the stairs and Catherine resumed her ascent.

She had made a call to Graeme Sunderland and asked him to request a meeting with the DCC on her behalf. She knew that Sunderland not only spoke Drummond’s language, but was closer to his rank and knew how to handle him. Thus Sunderland had established that Drummond had a window to chat before admitting that it wouldn’t be himself who was doing the talking.

As she reached the landing and turned left through the swing doors she was beginning to question the wisdom of this, doubts assailing her as to whether this was a conversation that she needed or wanted to have. She liked to think she had a good track record of speaking truth to power – perhaps at cost to her advancement on occasion – but there was a voice in her head asking whether this was an exercise that unnecessarily put her in harm’s way.

In a jungle of political animals, Drummond was an alpha predator. He was shrewd, calculating, slippery and ruthless, an arch strategist who had hidden agendas inside his hidden agendas, and an ear for the subtext in every statement. He was so much in his element among the upper echelons of management that it was almost amusing to think of him once upon a time out conducting inquiries, taking statements, getting bodies. The very notion was like seeing unearthed footage of a cabinet minister working behind the bar as a student.

He was on the panel that interviewed her for the LOCUST job. She had always assumed Abercorn made sure Drummond recognised one of his tribe, but only now was she contemplating how that might only have been part of it. Just as big a factor could have been that Drummond had taken a dislike to her.

He wasn’t someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of. Abercorn, for all his machinations, gave the impression of having very little ego. It was all in the game to him, which was why he was so thick-skinned about LOCUST’s unpopularity. Drummond, by contrast, was self-regarding and spiteful.

As Moira put it, ‘it’s always about him: that’s his weakness and his strength. If you never lose sight of that, you’ll be fine.’

Catherine was grateful for the advice, but suspected that in order to be fine she’d need a lot more than that.

She’d have been wary of mentioning the subject of Bob Cairns with the DCC even before she learned they had worked together. His name was well up anybody’s list of Things We Don’t Talk About, but to Drummond, a man who was inclined to take embarrassments to the force as a personal affront – as though people had cooked it all up just to make
him
look bad – then you’d better have a bloody good reason for bringing it up. It would be like going up to Michael Barrymore and saying, ‘Hey, can we talk swimming pools?’

In fact, Catherine was wary of mentioning Bob Cairns to any cop over a certain age, because even if they never knew him personally they might still be inclined to harbour a vicarious resentment towards her for putting him away.

Cairns had a charge sheet of murder and corruption going back thirty years, a paid lieutenant of the notorious Iain Fallan in his bloody pact with the self-styled Gallowhaugh Godfather himself, Tony McGill. If he had been in any other line of work she’d have been fêted for a bloody good collar. Unfortunately, when it came to unmasking bent cops, the messenger always got shot. Everybody knew you did the right thing, but nobody was going to thank you for it. Most of them wished it all had never happened, which was fair enough, but others were clearly of the belief that it would have been better if it all had simply never come out.

The question was which camp Drummond fell into.

Catherine pictured herself outside the headmaster’s office as she knocked at his door, expecting to hear ‘Come!’ barked out in response. Instead, Drummond appeared at the door and held it open for her, beckoning her inside. He seemed approachable to the point of solicitous.

She wondered what she had done to deserve this welcome, then she remembered that this was part of his game. Like any politician, you wouldn’t get far unless you could turn on the charm, and carefully control which face you presented to any given audience.

It was a timely warning. No matter what they discussed,
Drummond would be polite, professional, calm and measured; and he would give no outward hint that she was being blacklisted for ever, right then and there.

She would have to pitch all of this with meticulous judgment, aware that simply by having arranged this meeting at all – even by requesting it – she was already starting at a deficit.

He showed her to a chair but remained on his feet. He took position behind his desk, framed by large windows offering a view north-east from Govan towards the city. Look at my domain, he was saying. He didn’t need the cheap psychology to emphasise his stature. He was very tall, if rather awkwardly so, reminding Catherine of her image of Steerpike in
Titus Groan
.

His hair was grey all over these days, in contrast to the conspicuously monochrome black dye job he sported for way too many years when he was vain about still appearing youthful. He had obviously decided that in senior management it was better to look distinguished, which made her wonder whether he was the only guy in the building to actually dye some of his hair grey in order to maximise the look.

‘So,’ he said, demonstrably ready for business now that he had composed the situation. ‘DCI Sunderland said you wanted to speak to me about the Fullerton case?’

He pitched a tone of inquiring puzzlement, as though he didn’t see how this could possibly be so and was curious to discover how.

‘Actually, sir, it’s a related matter that I was hoping you could help me with. Shortly prior to his death, Fullerton appeared to be taking a pronounced interest in an old murder case, one that you played a part in investigating.’

‘Oh, right,’ he said, still sounding unsure where he might fit in. ‘And is your area of interest not covered in the files?’

Catherine concealed a wince, aware that, only moments in, the deficit had already increased. She wasn’t just in danger of looking impertinent, but incompetent too.

‘We can’t find the files, sir. The case is a quarter-century old, and I don’t know when you were last in the morgue, but . . .’

He gave an impatient nod.

‘It’s like a fractal experiment down there, I know,’ he acknowledged, though this concession didn’t necessarily mean he accepted her excuse. ‘What was the case?’

Catherine took a breath.

‘Julie Muir. She was murdered by a man called Teddy Sheehan. I believe the investigation was led by Bob Cairns.’

So there it was: out. She had reasoned that there was no going back now, so she ought to dive straight in. Any fannying about regarding the Cairns part was to imply that she thought Drummond had reason to be uncomfortable, and she really didn’t want that.