Head Shot (2 page)

What he did not like was being sat on his arse in a decrepit sub office like Oxgangs for hours on end, catching cal s, which in practice rarely came in, dealing with theoretical evil-doers who were, in practice, tucked up in bed. It was not unusual for night-watch guys to spend their entire shift reading the Evening News, and listening to the insomniacs' programmes on Radio Forth, envying the disc-jockeys for the fact that at least they had someone to talk to, envying the guys and girls in their panda cars, just for the fact that they were out there. No, what Charlie did not like was sheer bloody boredom.

Yet, when the phone rang, at first he failed to hear it. He was on the verge of solving a tricky clue in the Sunday Express crossword ... or, at least, he thought he was. It sounded four times before it made its way through to his consciousness. He scowled, and picked it up. 'Oxgangs police office,' he barked.

'Hello there,' said a female voice. 'Sorry to wake you.'

'That's okay, dear,' he responded, his weariness in contrast with her chirpiness. 'I was away for a hit and a miss.'

'Lucky it wasn't a day and a night. Listen, this is Nicola Ford; I'm a paramedic, and I'm at the doctor's surgery just down the road from your station. There's a dead man here.'

Johnston frowned. 'Aye, wel , that happens. Doesn't it?'

'Not in places like this, in the middle of the night, it doesn't.

Surgeries are usual y closed at two in the morning. Our night time call-outs are either to houses, pub fights or road accidents. This man's had a heart attack, here at the doctor's.'

'So? What do you want us to do about it?'

'I want your lot to attend.'

'What for? Is there no' a doctor there?'

'Yes, but this is an unusual case. DrAmritraj says the man called him at home, bypassing the normal emergency service. He was complaining of mild chest pains. The doctor says that he offered to cal an ambulance right away, but the man refused. He wanted a home visit. Normal y, Dr Amritraj would have referred him to the night service, but he says that he knew him quite well, so he went round to see him.'

Charlie Johnston stifled a yawn. 'Aye, so? How did he get to the surgery?'

'I was getting to that. The doctor says he was a bit concerned by his symptoms. He wanted to take him to A&E at the Royal, but the patient became agitated at the suggestion. He said that he had a phobia about hospitals and he refused point-blank to go there. The doctor has an ECG

machine in his surgery, so he decided that he would take him there for a proper check-up, and that if he was having a heart attack, he'd sedate him, put him under, like, then cal us.

'The patient agreed to that and they came here, but before Dr Amritraj even got him hooked up to the ECG, he took a cardiac arrest. The doctor tried to resuscitate him; he shocked him, gave him atropine, al the usual procedures, but it was no use. So he called us to take him to the mortuary.'

'That's fine, hen, but what do you need us for? There was a doctor in attendance when the man died, so we don't need to be informed.'

'That's what DrAmritraj said, but there's the next of kin,' the paramedic answered, a little less chirpily than before. 'The man lived alone. The surgery has no other family members on its books, and no clue as to where they might be. It's your job to trace them, not ours. We can't stay here all night; we've got to shift him.'

'Aye, all right,' said Charlie. 'I'l get a panda round as soon as I can.

Haud on a minute.' He laid the phone on the counter of the office, and turned to the radio transmitter. 'Any car in the Oxgangs area, come in please,' he said, into the microphone.

There was a crackling sound. 'Aye, Charlie?' a male voice answered.

'Need an attendance at the doctor's surgery in Oxgangs Road. There's a body there, and next-of-kin needin' advised.'

'Cannae do it, man. We've got a domestic here. Bloke's thumped his wife; we're having taste arrest him.'

'What about Jenny?'

'Her car's down the bypass at a road accident.'

'Aye, okay.' He flicked the mike off, and picked up the phone.

'Listen, hen,' he said. 'Al our cars are occupied, so I'll have to come myself. I can do that; I just have to put my phone on divert and let divisional HQ know why. I'll just be a couple of minutes.'

Excited at last by the prospect of escaping from his nocturnal prison, the clerk, dispatcher and occasional jailer made his arrangements, slipped on his uniform tunic, with its utility belt, and made ready to step out into the fresh night air. As an afterthought, he took the office's Polaroid camera from the desk where it was kept.

10

3.

He liked the spring; 'the renewal of God's promise' he called it, even though he had never been devoutly Christian. Few things appalled him more, in fact, than his country's religious right, and their active involvement in the electoral process ensured that he was an ever-present at the pol s, voting the straight Democrat ticket whatever the personal failings of its candidates.

Indeed in the previous fal he had been proud to play his part in ensuring that party kept its grip on the New York State senatorial seat, beginning in the process a career which he hoped would lead the new incumbent to the White House in her own right. How the First Gentleman would take that would be something else again, but what the hell, he had had his eight years.

He approved of women in public life. Just as well. Goddammit, he thought, with a smile, with the wife and daughter I've got.

He had been an active politician himself once upon a time, forty-five and more years back, a young man not fresh from law school, but forged thereafter by bloody action in Korea. A short spell in the public defender's office in New York City had been enough to light the spark. He had seen men die in battle and had accepted it as something that came with his birthright. But the sight of one of his clients, a young black boy barely out of his teens, being dragged, screaming, to the electric chair, strapped down and virtual y burned to death, had made him physically sick on the spot.

He was elected to the State Senate and served for a total of six years, through the cold dark years when Elsenhower was president, Nixon was scheming to succeed him, and John Foster Dul es, and his spymaster brother, ruled the country. With the rise of Kennedy, friends of his from Massachusetts persuaded him to put his own political career to one side for a while, to work on the young senator's presidential campaign team. There had been a promise of national office at the first electoral opportunity, but in the immediate aftermath of the narrow triumph, his reward had been a post as second assistant attorney general, in Bobby Kennedy's team.

He and the new president's aggressive, ambitious brother were at odds from the start, and relations between them had worsened when he had discovered that the New York senatorial seat, which he had been told would be his in time, was in fact earmarked for Bobby.

And so, a mere six weeks before the fall of the elected King Arthur, he had accepted an offer to become a senior partner in what was then known as McLean and Whyte, the largest legal firm in Buffalo, in his home state. In the same month, he had made an offer of his own, one of marriage to Susannah, a young teacher he had met in Washington.

Yes, he had seen a few springs since then, he mused, as he gazed out through the trees, across the glassy Great Sacandaga Lake, its waters catching the last rays of the evening sun. There had been thirty-eight of them, to be precise, every one memorable in its own way, every one marked by increasing success, professional y and privately. Where once he had dreamed on a national scale, dreamed without limit for a brief period, so caught up had he been in the seductive atmosphere ofCamelot, now he reflected on the success he had made of his life, materially and spiritually.

Most of all there had been his daughter, a special girl from the outset.

As she had grown, blooming in her intelligence and her beauty, he had looked at her, looked at his wife, and at himself, far more of a golden family than any branch of the doomed Kennedy clan, and he had wondered that he had ever been so weak that he had been seduced by their promises of joy. Why had he ever sought to bask in their glory, when such light had lain within himself, waiting for its moment to shine?

He leaned back in his rocking chair on the wide wooden terrace under the eaves of their log cabin, enjoying the shimmering colours of the lake before him. A brassy piece ofAaron Copland sounded from inside, and he caught the aroma of brewing coffee. 'Couldn't get any more American, could we?' he said aloud, and wondered what his son-in-law would think if he could see him lounging there.

He frowned as he thought of his son-in-law; now there was an individual who would have given them pause for thought, back in the sixties. There was stil time for him to do that, even now. Yes, he had plans for his son-in-law. He had to see him, and soon, for there was something he had to discuss with him, something very serious ...

The familiar creaking board sounded behind him; Susannah's footfal as she carried out the supper tray to lay upon their table. He made to rise, 12

stiffly as always these days. And then he felt the cold, sharp thing whipping suddenly round his neck, tightening so fast, with a faint, peculiar twanging sound. He had no time to think, only to feel his tongue swell in his mouth and his eyes bulge in their sockets, to hear the roaring in his ears and to see the evening burst for an instant into sudden flaring light, and then go black.

The man held the strangling wire tight for some time after the old man's still-muscular body had gone limp, after his bladder had given forth its own signal. Finally, he released it, letting him slump down into his chair; and then he turned, and went into the isolated, lonely wooden house.

4

'So, Willie, how are you finding the air through here?' Sir James Proud asked his assistant; his deputy in Bob Skinner's absence.

'Pure and clear, gaffer,' Haggerty replied. 'So fuckin' pure that every so often it makes me dizzy.'The Chief Constable's left eyebrow twitched slightly; he realised that the dining room waitress was behind him, and had overheard. 'Excuse my French, Maisie,' he apologised.

'That's a'right, sir,' she said, as she laid a bowl of thick pea soup before him. 'Ah'm frae Glesca myself, originally. Ah know yis are a'

linguists through there.'

Still, thought Haggerty, as she laid a salad before Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Martin, this is another king's court I'm in now ...

even if the prime minister is away.

Proud Jimmy scratched his chin. 'You know, gentlemen,' he mused, 'as an Edinburgh man, born and bred, I'm bound to say that I'm beginning

to feel like an outsider in my own force. There's Bob, there's you, Andrew, and now you, Willie; west of Scotland men all of you, all my senior team. Mind you, the balance wil swing back in my favour in a couple of weeks.'

'Aye,' Haggerty grunted. 'The Tay, the Tay, oh the silvery Tay,' he quoted. 'Long may it flow from Perth to Dundee. You looking forward to it, Andy?'

Martin shrugged his broad shoulders; green eyes flashed. 'Sure. On the whole, I am. It'l be a wrench though; I've been in this city for all of my police career so far.'

'Which is exactly why you had to go for the Tayside job, son,' the Chief interjected. 'It's the way things are; you can't be a one-force man any more, not if you have aspirations to command rank.' He glanced at Haggerty, reading his mind. 'I'm no example to quote either, before you do. I'm the last of the dinosaurs. Yes, I've been here a long time; too damned long, a few of our council ors have been heard to say.

They think I'm just hanging on to spite them; I'm not, though.' He smiled, wickedly. 'We've got plans. Bob and I. A couple of years will 14

see them through to fruition, then I'l be off.'

The outgoing Head of CID managed with some difficulty to keep his surprise from showing on his face. He had discussed the future with Bob Skinner, his closest friend as well as his immediate boss, but he had never heard Sir James anticipate his own retirement. He guessed that his imminent departure for assistant chief constable rank in the Tayside force had raised him to another level of confidence.

'So,' Haggerty murmured, pausing in his determined consumption of his soup, 'the balance is swinging back, is it? Is that stil a secret?'

Proud Jimmy sat back slightly in his chair. 'It never was, Willie, not from you. I'm sorry, I thought you'd been informed. It was decided before you arrived, but I had to wait for the man at the centre of it to get back from holiday. He did, today, and we told him. Dan Pringle will succeed Andy as head of CID, when he goes in two weeks.'

'Big Clan, eh. He'll be pleased.'

'He's like a dog with two tails, Willie; like a dog with two tails.'

Martin grinned. 'You should have seen him,' he told the ACC.

'Pringle's such a phlegmatic bugger; I don't think I've ever known him to get excited, before this. When he was passed over last time, he thought that was it for him. He thought that Brian Mackie would be appointed, out of al the divisional CID

commanders.'

'So did I,' Haggerty confessed. 'Either him or Maggie Rose, at any rate.'

'Bob and Andy thought it was too soon for either of them,' the Chief explained. 'Besides, Pringle's done a fine job over the last few months in sharpening up the Borders Division. We all agreed that he deserved it.

Actual y, the truth is it's very much an interim appointment; Dan's not that far away from retirement.'

'So who's going to the Borders?'

'Mario McGuire,' the DCS told him. 'He's done his Special Branch stint; he's earned a move as well. So he's off on promotion to a divisional CID command, as a detective superintendent just like his wife, and big Mcl henney's going to the SB job.'

'Which leaves a vacancy as Bob's executive officer,' Haggerty mused.

'Indeed it does,' the Chief agreed. 'That'l be decided after Bob gets back from his conference. Incidental y, he and I have been discussing that subject more generally. After al the fuss we had with Ted Chase, we've decided that you should have the opportunity to appoint your own assistant. Sergeant rank: think about it, eh?'