Where the Bodies are Buried (41 page)

She’d even managed tears at this point; the sound of them anyway.

‘Hang on, calm down, hen. Calm down. Keep it together. What’s happened?’

‘Too much to say. I’ve got myself in way over my head. I’ve found out some things and I’m really, really scared. This guy
you told me about, Glen Fallan, he isn’t dead. I thought he was someone else at first, and I thought he was going to help
me, but he’s everything you said, and there’s people trying to kill him and now he’s been arrested and I’ve got nobody if
they come after me, and there’s these photographs and I don’t know—’

‘Woah, steady the Buffs. Stay calm. He’s been arrested?’

‘Yes. He tried to shoot these police officers, and he took
my car
to do it, and now I’m scared they’ll think I was involved. I know you said to sit tight and stay out of this, but I think
everything that’s gone on is connected with whatever’s happened to my uncle Jim. Have you found anything out?’

‘I’ve made a few inquiries. Nothing as dramatic as you, by the sounds of it. Did you say something about photographs?’

‘It’s these infrared photographs that Jim ordered. Overhead shots
of the landscape, north of Glasgow, mostly the Campsie Hills, taken in late 1983. The guy he ordered them from said that they
show up body heat, even from cemeteries. I think Jim was trying to find where some bodies might be buried, and I think somebody
might have killed him to prevent that. I’m scared they’re coming for me next. But if I give the photos to you, you’ll be able
to look into it, won’t you? You’ll find out what’s going on, and find out who’s doing this, and I’ll be safe, and—’

‘Keep it together, hen. Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay. Are the photos with you just now?’

‘Yes. I’m at Jim’s office. I thought it was the safest place because they’ve already burgled it. Can you come and meet me
here? Please? Quickly?’

‘You sit tight, hen. Sit tight. I’ll be with you soon.’

And now he was in the building, only seconds away. Was this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? she wondered.
The former, she hoped. She had to escape this place of stasis, this state of life on hold.

She cast her mind back seven days, everything that had passed since flickering past in a blur. Her surroundings were the same
but the world looked different; the eyes that viewed that world, those surroundings, altered far more.

Some things had not changed, however. Once again she was sitting in Jim’s office, contemplating his absence and what deeds
might lie behind it. Once again Detective McDade was on his way here, intent on removing evidence and about to encounter someone
he was not expecting.

‘Remember, you’ll be covered at all times,’ Fallan had assured her.

Why did people think putting more guns into the equation made things
safer?

The office door opened and McDade walked in.

There were no lines scripted for this part: just the appropriate expression on her face and the composure of her body language
as she stood by the window, expectantly cradling the cardboard scrolls.

She stood there helplessly, offering them towards him, clutching them just a little too tight so that they bunched together
and one threatened to spill to the floor. McDade strode over swiftly to relieve her of them, which was when he felt cold steel
against the base of his skull.

‘Hands up and to the sides,’ Fallan commanded. ‘You’ve got a Heckler and Koch Mark 23 plus suppressor pointed right into your
brain stem, and unlike your effort on Saturday, this one’s armed with subsonic low-velocity ammunition, which will very quietly
bounce around back and forth inside your skull until your brain is mush.’

Or at least that was what Fallan told him. It was, in fact, a length of pipe, but that mattered little, as there would be
a silenced automatic in Fallan’s hands in only a few seconds’ time.

‘Where’s your piece?’ he asked.

McDade went to reach inside his jacket.

Fallan moved the pipe and pressed it into the base of McDade’s spine instead.

‘Slowly,’ he warned. ‘Barrel between your fingers. And in case you were thinking you might have a window here to try something
because I won’t shoot you in the head, you’d be right. I need you alive. What I don’t particularly need is for you to be able
to walk. Ever again.’

McDade very slowly removed a silencer-fitted handgun from his jacket, holding it as instructed. Fallan took it from him and
quickly examined it, ejecting the magazine for a moment then slamming it home again.

‘You’ll be Fallan’s boy, then,’ McDade stated evenly. ‘Not quite as under arrest as I’d been led to believe,’ he added, eyeing
Jasmine with accusatory malice.

‘Tramping about where I’m not meant to with my dainty little feet,’ she said, reminding him of his patronising words the last
time he was standing there.

‘I don’t think you can really take the huff with Jasmine,’ said Fallan, ‘considering what you came here to do to the girl.’

‘And what you did to my uncle Jim.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came here to have a look at these photos you told me about.’

‘With a silenced Beretta?’

‘She told me people had been shooting at her. It was for her protection.’

‘Aye, I forgot: you’re polis. You’re all about doing the right thing, aren’t you, Detective Inspector McDade?’

‘It’s Detective Sergeant. And I suggest you put the gun down. I realise there’s some dangerous people on your case, but I
can help you with that.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Fallan told him. ‘Which is why you’re about to take us on a wee jaunt to the Campsies. See, the thing
is, we already know the truth about what you’ve done, so it’s not lies and denials that will stop it being a one-way trip
for you.’

‘What will?’ he asked nervously.

They took Jim’s surveillance van. Jasmine went first, told by Fallan to check that the path was clear and to have a look at
the car park, making sure McDade hadn’t been followed.

‘It’s just his car out there,’ she reported. ‘A silver Vauxhall Vectra.’

Jasmine got the van open while Fallan escorted McDade to the vehicle and directed him to the driver’s seat. Fallan then took
his place on the passenger side and Jasmine climbed into the back.

Fallan dangled the keys for McDade to take, keeping the Beretta pointed at him with his right hand.

‘I know off hand about twenty parts of the body where I can shoot you a couple of times without it seriously impairing your
ability to drive,’ he warned.

‘Where are we going?’ McDade asked.

Fallan had explained the choice of vehicle by telling McDade that it seemed ‘appropriate, a wee tribute to absent friends’.
In truth, it was because they had already set up a couple of cameras inside, as well as sound-recording equipment tuned to
receive signals from the transmitters they were each wearing. They were also both carrying digital voice recorders, and Jasmine
had set her phone to audio-memo mode as well, as another backup. They wanted to catch every word and every nuance. It wasn’t
just a matter of soliciting an admission, but about getting him to reveal irreparably damaging knowledge, facts only the guilty
could know, and the biggest of those would dictate their destination.

‘You’re going to take us to the Ramsays, then to Jim Sharp,’ Fallan told him, as McDade started the engine.

‘I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Fallan pressed the end of the silencer into a fleshy part of McDade’s thigh.

‘Don’t tempt me. We know you were there when the Ramsays were killed. We know Dominic Wilson was born Charlie Ramsay. We know
you brought the baby to your pal Ruaraidh. We know you’re his goto guy on this, the guy he phoned when Jim called up asking
awkward
questions. Wilson told us all this himself, so get the pedal to the metal.’

McDade gave a quivering sigh, fear, anger, shock and resignation all readable in his response. He put the van into gear and
began to drive.

‘Aye, I suppose you’re wondering why Wilson didn’t call you after
we
came asking awkward questions. Couple of reasons, really. He didn’t know he was effectively ordering a hit when he phoned
you about Jim. More importantly, though, he understood he had nothing to fear, because we’re not hell-bent on dropping him
in it. Or you, necessarily.’

McDade shot Fallan a guardedly curious look, then returned his eyes to the road.

‘How so?’ he asked, accelerating up a slip road on to the M77.

‘Because we’re not here looking for justice. A bunch of old men going to jail isn’t going to bring back Jasmine’s uncle Jim.’

‘What?’ Jasmine asked, with vocal shock and heartfelt outrage. ‘This isn’t what we discussed. I bloody well
am
looking for justice.’

‘You won’t find it, though. It’s a chimera, it’s Peter Pan’s shadow. Even if you can get hold of it, you’ll discover it’s
got no substance, and it’s nae use when you’re paying the rent.’

‘So what
are
we looking for?’ she asked, indignant sarcasm dripping from her emphasis.

‘Compensation,’ he replied, addressing McDade. ‘See, I once read how there’s certain cultures who believe that if you murder
a man, your punishment is that his family become your responsibility. It left a profound impression on me. It’s a principle
I’ve embraced. When you killed Jim Sharp, you took away not just Jasmine’s uncle, but her livelihood as well.’

‘You want money? So why are we going to the Campsies?’

‘Mutual assurance. See, here’s how it’s gaunny play. There’s a shovel in the back of the van. You’re gaunny take us to where
the bodies are buried and you’re gaunny dig them up for verification. They won’t be in the best of nick, but Eilidh Ramsay
was wearing an engagement ring with a diamond, a ruby and an emerald set in gold. I’m figuring, what with you all being filth,
you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to steal it and put it into circulation, so it should be still there. Jim will be easier
to ID, obviously.

‘That gives us proof of what you know. Maybe we’ll even take a few wee snaps of you in action. After that, it’s time for financial
reparation, and you’re going to be giving till it hurts, as they say. Once we’ve got
the money, you and Cairns and Raeside can come back and move the bodies so there’s no way we can hurt you and no more reason
for you to hurt us.’

And what if I
don’t know
where these people are buried?’ McDade asked, with earnest anxiety.

‘Then we still go up the Campsies, except you use the shovel to dig a big hole, I put two in your head and bury you there,
and we go through all this again tomorrow night with Bob Cairns or Bill Raeside.’

‘Christ,’ McDade muttered, sounding broken. ‘How much do you want?’

‘Three hundred thousand. Two for Jasmine, one for me.’

‘Three … ?’ he gasped, giving a hollow laugh of incredulity. Jasmine didn’t rate his acting. ‘You’re forgetting you’re dealing
with polis, not gangsters, Fallan. We’re skint. We’re gaunny be living off pensions in a year or so.’

‘Aye, I’d sympathise, if it wasnae that I was talking to this jewel thief who saw you walking out of Central station on Thursday
morning with a very big bag of uncut heroin. My sources tell me Frankie Callahan was paying three million per shipment. Now,
obviously you’d have to be charging Tony McGill less for the drugs per se, maybe two mill, but once you factor in taking out
the competition for him as well, it’s got to be up to at least two point five. Maybe two point four so it’s a three-way split
of eight hundred each. Or is there somebody else?’

McDade visibly seethed, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the wheel.

‘Nobody else.’

‘McDade, Cairns and Raeside … and now Fallan again, just like the old days, eh? Except this time Fallan’s not taking an equal
share of the payout. Just a kick in the arse over ten per cent. That seems fair enough, doesn’t it? So once we’ve seen the
bodies, you’re going to make some calls. We want it tonight. All of it.’

‘We don’t have it.’

‘Bollocks you don’t,’ Fallan said, sticking the silencer into McDade’s groin. ‘The station job was Thursday morning and it’s
now Tuesday night.’

The van wobbled a little between lanes on the motorway, then came back into line.

‘You think Tony McGill hands over three million quid just like that?’ McDade asked.

‘No, I’m guessing there’s instalments, but if you’d any sense, the biggest one would be upon initial delivery. A third, maybe?
Twenty per cent?’

‘Twenty-five,’ McDade admitted with a sigh.

‘There you go, then. Three hundred easy, after which you’re away clean with the rest, without having to kill anybody else.
Just view it as Big Fall getting his share first. Aye, a pay-off from Tony McGill: just like the good old days. I don’t really
remember you, though. Mind you, you weren’t Gallowhaugh CID, were you? You were Drug Squad. How did that work?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean what was the quid pro quo? Drug Squad: I’m guessing Tony was good for information, got you plenty of arrests, dope-on-the-table
stuff. It’s your end I can’t suss. Normally it was about turning a blind eye, but with Tony there were no drugs to turn a
blind eye to. That was his whole deal: the man keeping drugs out of Gallowhaugh. What did you do for him? Was it just about
getting rid of problems, eliminating the competition, same as now? Did you kill the Ramsays for him? What did they do wrong?
How did that go down?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ McDade said, his voice trembling with emotion. He almost sounded tearful. ‘It was nothing like that.
You called it the good old days, well it fucking wasnae. It was the worst of times. You’re not too young that you don’t remember.
It was wild, brutal. We were stretched so thin you could practically see through us. We had to do the odd deal with the devil,
accept a few least-worst solutions.’

‘Taking folk up the Campsies and killing them doesn’t sound least-worst to me.’

‘Look who’s talking,’ McDade said bitterly.

‘I never swore to protect and serve, or whatever you chancers claim. You were supposed to be the good guys.’