04-Mothers of the Disappeared (22 page)

When I left Wood in the locker, he was alive.

I always had my doubts as to how the fire had started.

Susan knew it. Refused to answer my questions.

There were too many secrets between us, me and Susan. Too many doubts and uncertainties. No wonder we’d been a bad match.

No wonder she’d left.

I said, ‘No. You shouldn’t.’

‘You’re always looking for secrets, Steed,’ she said. ‘All the time. Even when there aren’t any.’

‘Yeah?’

She shook her head. But she smiled.

I decided that was enough of an answer for me.

‘Y
ou have a … David Burns is here to see you.’

Dot was pretty good at keeping a neutral air around most clients, but David Burns had this way of getting to people. Maybe it was the sanctimonious air of hypocrisy that hung around him. Didn’t need a caged canary to catch a whiff of that.

He came through, smiling, offering his free hand. ‘Always said you were like a dog with a bone, son.’ I couldn’t help but notice the envelope he had with him. What was he carrying? A reward?

I nodded. This wasn’t how I’d intended to approach Burns. The idea had been to wait for Taylor to be arrested, for the whole damn thing to be over. But with Taylor on the run, and currently nowhere to be found, it was only a matter of time before word reached the old man.

No doubt he had someone on the inside. His kind always do.

He sat down without being asked. I swallowed my pride, let it pass without comment. ‘I don’t like to see the guilty go unpunished.’

‘Something we have in common,’ he said. ‘A crime like that is … unforgiveable.’

‘There are victims that are off limits,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘We talk around things all the time, you and me,’ he said. ‘Never quite saying what we really mean. I think that’s what gives rise to … misunderstandings between us. I’m no angel, I accept that. I’ve had to. People in my life, they have to make choices that privileged people can’t always understand.’

‘And here was me thinking you wanted to be friends.’

‘You always had some learning to do about life. I think leaving the police was the best thing you ever did, son.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You know I’ve always had an interest in you. Because I think you’ve been learning more and more about how to make hard choices. My overtures have been a bit … enthusiastic, I admit. But I see potential in you.’

I felt the familiar clench. The knot in my stomach and the tremors in my hands that told me the only way to relieve the tension was to bodily chuck the old fucker out of the office. Preferably through the window.

While it was still closed.

But I held the urge in check. Wondering if he noticed.

‘It’s getting hard to tell who the bad guys are any more.’

‘You sound like him, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Ernie.’

‘Bright?’

He nodded. ‘I told you before,’ he said. ‘We were old friends.’

‘He tried to take you down more than once.’

‘He was a copper. That was his job. But I think he always understood the need for men like me.’

I nodded. ‘You went to school together, didn’t you?’

He nodded. Around a year and a half earlier, he’d given me a potted history of their friendship in an attempt to explain why Ernie had appeared – to me at least – to be a crooked copper, not the hero I’d always thought he was.

Three years ago, before Ernie’s murder, I’d discovered this apparent friendship, while working a case that had deep ties to Burns. The old man had been throwing a party at his house when I went round to talk to him about a case that had been troubling me. I wound up threatening Burns, shoving him against the wall. Then one of his guests intervened. The shock of that guest being Ernie Bright, the man who had embodied everything that being a detective ever meant to me, quelled my anger, turned it into a betrayed confusion.

Ernie died before we could ever really talk about what had happened that night.

But something in my brain was beginning to click. Connections that had been disparate before now started to come together. Back in the nineties, Ernie had been Burns’s contact on the force during a brief period when the police had taken it into their heads to work unofficially with the devils they knew to take down the devils they didn’t. According to Burns, that partnership had outlasted the operation because of the two men’s shared background. But there was something else going on, something that I hadn’t been aware of.

That even Burns wasn’t aware of.

Something that tied together all the apparent contradictions surrounding Ernie Bright.

I said, ‘In the grand scheme of things, you keep a tidy house. Your operations are run like a business.’

He smiled. ‘This isn’t really the place to talk about such things.’

I relented. Too eager. He wanted to trust me because of whatever bond he felt was between us. But he hadn’t got where he was today by being an idiot. Like Taylor, he understood the need to hide in public the things he did in private. But oddly, I was beginning to understand his long-standing argument about the relativism of criminal activity, and how he was less of a monster than someone like Taylor.

But that didn’t make him less of a criminal. Not to me, and certainly it wouldn’t have to Ernie. No, even if they had been friends, I knew that Ernie was not the kind of man to confuse his principles in the way Burns had described.

Why was Susan working with SCDEA on this project?

Why was she so desperate for me to get in close with Burns?

It made sense. Absolute sense. When you stopped to think about it.

I said, ‘Maybe we can talk about things later. I can tell you what I know about Taylor.’

He stood up. ‘If you hear anything about this pervert, where he is, whatever, give me a call. I’d like to see him face justice.’

‘You mean you want to be the one to call in the cops?’

He found that funny enough to give me a chuckle. ‘Something like that. I guess we’ll see,’ he said. ‘In the meantime I have a proposition for you. Things have changed between us. I’m sure of that. We have an understanding.’

I shrugged.

He put the envelope on the table. Patted it. ‘Maybe I’m wrong. But I think we might do when you see this. When you hear my little proposition.’

I looked at the envelope. A sick feeling built in my stomach.

‘Five years,’ the old bugger says. ‘Five years since I offered you the chance to come and work with me …’

D
o you like taking photographs?

The kind of grubby work that gave the investigative gig a bad name. The equivalent of scouting for cheating spouses or, worse, hacking phones for desperate showbiz journos.

And yet this was the test he gave me.

Clever, when you thought about it. Had the dual effect of testing my loyalty and alienating me from potential allies on the other side.

What I wanted to do was throw the assignment in his face, and him out the door. But instead, I walked out calmly, with the assignment in hand and the stain on my soul.

I was in.

At least, I had my foot in the door. Now I just had to make sure I could squeeze my whole body through what gap there was.

Getting the images he wanted was easy enough. All I had to do was book a room for the night at the Apex. I told the guy on the desk that a friend had stayed before, really liked this room on the top floor, and if there was any way he could give me the same one, I’d be grateful. A simple lie. Worked easy enough, too.

The room was good. Inside, I set myself up for the evening, figured I might have to wait a night or two to get what I wanted. What Burns wanted.

I set up the camera via the air conditioning, snaking the endoscope camera through the pipes, feeding it slowly until I came up against the grille on the other side.

The other end was connected via USB to a laptop. I positioned the machine where I could see what was happening, then turned on the TV and settled in for the night.

They came in at around 10 p.m.

I noticed the movement, got up, watched the images on the laptop. The frame rate was a little jerky, but it did the job. They kept the lights on low, but it was enough. I didn’t have to adjust for night vision.

They moved with the slightly awkward gait that came with a little too much wine for dinner. I was glad there was no sound. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say to him just before she kissed him.

The camera recorded everything.

At a certain point, I figured I had enough to satisfy Burns, stopped the camera taking images.

There was a dead weight in my stomach.

I knew what Burns really wanted. There was a very good reason he had handed me this assignment. And you don’t want to upset the client by failing to give them what they really want.

I started the camera again.

They were done. Finished. Lying in bed together. If either of them smoked, they’d probably have sparked up.

Or not.

The room was, after all, non-smoking.

I left my room, went next door, hammered hard enough to wake the dead. Took about thirty seconds before Griggs answered. He was wearing the complimentary hotel dressing gown. His features crinkled with an unasked question.

I punched him in the face. He fell back. I walked inside.

Susan was out of bed, on her feet. ‘Steed!’

I shook my head, grabbed Griggs by the shoulders and pushed him against a wall. ‘There’s a camera in the duct. Recording all of this. No sound. But it sees everything that’s going on.’

‘What the fuck?’

‘You wanted me to get on Burns’s good side, this goes a long way.’

‘Do it, then, you prick!’

I punched him in the stomach. He doubled.

Susan grabbed my shoulder, spun me round. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you … I didn’t …’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. I lifted my hands. I would only take this so far, and it would stretch credulity for me to attack Susan as well. ‘It’s fine.’

I backed off.

Susan looked ready to say something.

Griggs slowly started to straighten. Coughing hard.

I went back to my room, pulled the camera roughly back through. Killed the feed.

‘Fuck you,’ I said, as though Burns was in the room with me.

And sent him the file.

I
spent most of the next day killing time. A package arrived with a disposable mobile enclosed. A note from Griggs attached. The note detailed drop points and contacts. The mobile was only for use in emergency situations.

After Dot was done for the day, I hung around, checking and double-checking old emails. Flipping case files. Feeling nauseous. Thinking about what I was about to do.

I had to be certain. Know that this was the right thing.

Getting close to Burns as Griggs wanted would mean abandoning every principle I’d ever had. It wasn’t just about adjusting my behaviour for a few minutes or hours, it was about losing myself to a life I detested.

I had to be sure.

Griggs’s initial approach had been to intimidate me with Kellen’s threat of investigation and incarceration. When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to seduce me, using Susan. And again when that didn’t work, he’d appealed to my sense of morality, such as it was.

Everyone has their own unique moral compass. There are lines that some people won’t cross, which others wouldn’t even consider an issue. We all answer to ourselves in the end. No God. No eternity of damnation. Just our own conscience.

All I wanted was for the guilty to be punished, the innocent to be protected. Or, if it came to it, avenged. The means to that end used to be important to me. But principles can only take you so far. It’s the intention that counts.

Right?

Maybe Burns and I weren’t so different after all.

When we were at her father’s house, two days earlier, I’d asked Susan why she hadn’t approached Burns, why Griggs hasn’t asked her to be the one to get close. After all, she’d have been perfect. She’d be able to finish her father’s work, and all that anger over his death would play perfectly into why she would be looking to work with a man like Burns.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ she told me. ‘Last year, I did things that … I hated myself, Steed, for what I did. I left one man to die, tried to kill another in cold blood. All because I was angry. Needed to hurt someone like I’d been hurt myself.’

I listened to her confession. We both knew that I understood. Because I had done the things that she had stopped herself from doing. Because I had crossed the lines that she could never bring herself to step over.

I closed down the PC, went to the window and looked out to the street. Across the way, the Benefits Office was closed, but a couple of old jakeys were hanging round near the disabled ramp sharing a bottle out of a bag and laughing at something only they would ever see the humour in.

The skies were clouding over. Night was stealing across the city.

Night time was when I’d always felt at my most comfortable. The daylight hours were an obligation; a concession to the majority. I’d work them if I had to, but when the sun went down, I was at my most awake. When I was young, my parents had told me I was a night owl, that I’d be best getting a job as a nightwatchman. They weren’t far wrong.

Griggs had this strange idea that all I needed to do was break a few laws to prove that I was on the old man’s side. My confrontation with him at the hotel would show that any trust we might have had in each other was broken, and more importantly so was my relationship with Susan. But Burns wasn’t daft. No matter what I did, he’d smell a rat. He wouldn’t trust me without good reason, and if my descent seemed too fast and convenient, he’d know something was wrong.

He would test me again. But not in the way that Griggs might expect. Burns wouldn’t ask me to take point on an armed robbery or beat up some poor schmuck who got behind on payments. He was too smart for that. He would test me in other ways, without me even knowing what he was doing. Burns liked to think of himself as a master manipulator, as a man who understood the human condition. All self-taught, of course. He was working class made good. He was what he believed other people aspired to. Had pulled himself up to a position of power through hard work and sheer determination. And all the way, he’d tell you, he took care of his own. Because in this world, that’s what you have to do.