Authors: Christopher Brookmyre
The Driving Seat
Jasmine pulled away from the brasserie car park and stopped at the T-junction, indicating right, where the promise of light a quarter of a mile ahead beckoned her in the direction of home. To her left was blackness, the occasional glow of oncoming headlights only seeming to emphasise how dark the boulevard was, more like a country road at night than an urban dual carriageway.
To the left was where Stevie Fullerton had gone on that fateful morning, into his own final darkness. She decided to retrace his path, see for herself the spot where this man, whom she had now learned was a relative, had spilled the last of the blood they shared. She endured no belated sense of loss at his death, but she now understood what he meant to Sheila, whose pain was adhering to Jasmine like the smoke from her cigarettes.
She drove along slower than normal, passing joggers and dog walkers, disturbed by how close she got before she saw them alongside. The road led from Croftbank, through Shawburn and on to Gallowhaugh: the one-time domain of Tony McGill.
Fallan had worked for him, Stevie too; indeed, according to local myth just about everybody involved in criminal enterprise – and plenty supposedly involved in preventing it – had been on his payroll at one time or another. As Fallan had put it, Tony McGill’s network was like Facebook for criminals.
Local myth also told that he was the man who ‘kept the drugs out of Gallowhaugh’, but according to Fallan this had been purely a self-serving strategy for shoring up his power base. An old-school gangster who built his broad fiefdom on rackets, robberies and contraband, he didn’t have a supply line for heroin when the game started to change, so he had applied his muscle to the Canute-like pursuit of driving the dealers off his turf. Not only did it slow the
consolidation of his emerging rivals (for a while, at least), but it conferred upon him a quite absurd air of civic respectability, with him painted as some kind of redoubtable community leader. Fallan said it was like when Nixon appointed Elvis as an anti-drugs figurehead: those in the know were utterly staggered at the ignorance among the well-meaning high and mighty.
McGill craved respectability as much as he craved money and power, Fallan told her.
‘He even fucking voted Tory.’
This compounded the ignominy when McGill went down for his part in a massive drug deal, the size of the haul testament to how jealously he craved a slice of the dominant new business. The McGill myth maintained that he had been set up, and according to Fallan this part was actually true, ‘just not by the cops’. He hadn’t elaborated, so this was the first Jasmine had learned of what he meant – and how he knew.
McGill’s sentence was commensurate with the scale of the haul, and he served more than half of it. When he first got out he had found himself yesterday’s bam, and for a few years had struggled to rebuild his powerbase, but these days he was right back at the top of the tree. Same as it ever was; he had climbed up there on the shoulders of some bent cops, who had got rid of a major rival for him and thus opened a gap in the drug market that he was well placed to fill.
Some said the best revenge is living well, but Jasmine didn’t imagine that memo had reached certain parts of Glasgow. If somebody screwed you over and you ended up in jail for more than fifteen years, living well when you got out was never going to be enough.
Jasmine reached the roundabout where the boulevard was transected by Capletmuir Road. The streetlights were functioning on the other side, running on a different circuit. A little past it was the ancient, disused petrol station that had been transformed into a car wash by Stevie Fullerton. A cash-only operation, the kind of business where the number of transactions was impossible to audit and thus a facility where it wasn’t just the vehicles that came out nice and clean on the other side.
There were cones blocking the entrance, so she pulled up on the pavement alongside the low boundary wall.
For a place dedicated to making things gleaming and spotless, the premises itself was pitifully shabby. She guessed it looked very different by day, when it was open: suds and spray and glinting chrome catching the eye and distracting it from signs of chronic neglect.
It had only been closed down a few days, but it already looked abandoned and imminently derelict. The islands where motorists used to fill up appeared conspicuously denuded of their pumps, and the sad little office was bereft of the posters, news hoardings and other paraphernalia that would have advertised a petrol station as a going concern. It seemed like the car wash had been a temporary commercial squat, a parasite business attached to its predecessor’s corpse.
The only paint that looked like it had been applied this century was on a single slab that denoted the far side of the exit back on to the dual carriageway. This, presumably, was the slab the gunman’s vehicle had struck on its hurried exit, according to witness accounts. It was on the left-hand side as you drove out, which tallied with what Laura Geddes had told her regarding Fallan’s Defender sustaining damage and paint transfer to its left flank.
Jasmine would never forget her first time sitting up front in that rickety, bumpy, diesel-smelling monstrosity, the place she had first conversed one on one with the man who was at that point insisting his name was Tron Ingrams. She could vividly picture the encounter still, not least because it ended in gunplay. There were still nights when she woke up shivering, her traitorous subconscious reliving the experience in her dreams: the shotgun blasts, the breakneck driving, the handbrake turns, the skid, the crash, the fear.
What was particularly weird was that frequently when she recalled the incident she would remember herself and not Ingrams as driving, and the reason for that was also what was wrong with this picture.
Fallan’s Land Rover was a left-hand drive.
He had purchased it overseas, and thus it was Jasmine’s memory of sitting on the right-hand side during the shoot-out that
sometimes confused her recall into thinking she had been at the wheel.
Laura had definitely said the scrape and the paint were on the left flank, and were sustained on the way out of the car wash.
Jasmine stared again at the white slab.
Its counterpart on the other side of the gap had enjoyed no such pampering, and nor had the slabs at the entrance. It was as though it had been painted for no other purpose than to be struck by a Land Rover Defender on its getaway from a shooting, leaving a distinguishing mark that would identify the culprit.
Our Betters
‘Should we have a wee sign with his name on it?’ Laura asked.
‘Flowers and balloons maybe?’
‘I think my warrant card will suffice,’ Catherine told her.
They were standing at an arrival gate at Edinburgh airport, waiting to intercept Gordon Ewart after he disembarked his flight from Heathrow. Catherine had made several fruitless attempts to contact him throughout the day; he was steadfastly ignoring the messages she was leaving on his mobile, and she had been consistently rebuffed by his secretary to an extent that made her suspect the woman was under explicit instruction to do so.
He would be in meetings all day, she said: that was why he was away in London. He was back down south in two days’ time, and had a full programme in between. Catherine didn’t even get offered an intentionally discouraging ‘how about a week on Thursday?’ The message was that he was incredibly important and immeasurably busy. But what was also implicit, and rather intriguing, was that he appeared to believe that if he stalled long enough, Catherine would give up and go away.
‘I feel like we’re paparazzi or reporters or something,’ Laura said, as the first passengers began streaming from the airbridge.
‘If we were reporters, they wouldn’t have let us down to the gate without a boarding pass.’
‘Can I still get duty free?’
Gordon Ewart was a senior executive for Cautela Group, on whose board his father still served as a director. It was a security-to-logistics behemoth, and Catherine was conscious that looking like a reporter might actually be worse than looking like a cop, given how skittish its senior management tended to be of late.
Cautela Group were the latest megafirm to be accused of
‘aggressive tax reduction’ strategies in the UK, a charge that carried all the more sting given how much of its business came from government-awarded contracts. Their suits wouldn’t be in the mood to answer questions from strangers, but Catherine had little doubt the firm would ride out the storm comfortably enough. Nothing succeeds like success, they said, but Cautela sat alongside the likes of Capita and G4S in proving that, for a connected few, nothing succeeds like failure also. It seemed no matter how many fuck-ups or embarrassments they were responsible for, the contracts just kept rolling in.
It probably helped if you had good government contacts. Such as having a former Tory cabinet minister and his son on the payroll.
She spotted Ewart striding briskly from the mouth of the airbridge, a tall figure carrying himself with absolute confidence. He was deep in conversation with another expensively suited middle-aged male, both of them bearing briefcases in one hand and their mobiles in the other.
They didn’t cast a look towards anybody as they marched in step, the thrusting gait of two men with places to be and who expected everybody else to recognise this and get the hell out of their way. Thus when Catherine and Laura stepped deliberately across their paths, they both flashed looks of annoyance at these impertinent females, but didn’t glance long enough to notice the badges.
‘Mr Ewart,’ Catherine began, but he waved her off brusquely and muttered something about having no comment to make.
Catherine fell into step and identified herself.
‘This is not
Dispatches
. I’m with Strathclyde Police. I need to ask you some questions about Stevie Fullerton.’
Ewart turned and glared at her in confused indignation, but he didn’t slow down.
‘You have got to be joking,’ he said. ‘You have really got to be fucking joking.’
According to Wiki he’d been a boarder at Strathallan. From the accent she guessed he hadn’t spent a lot of his holiday time beyond the periphery of his father’s house, never mind the periphery of his father’s constituency.
‘No, I’m not joking and this isn’t a bloody strippergram either. I am investigating—’
‘I know what you’re investigating. Jesus Christ, I thought this was sorted. I literally don’t have time for this and it would be in both our interests, believe me, were you to leave me alone
right now
.’
He strode on, his face flushed. His companion looked uncomfortable to be witness to this, Ewart no doubt furious at the embarrassment. He was showing no intention of stopping.
How about some more awkward, Catherine thought.
‘It’s concerning two different murder inquiries,’ she said loudly. ‘Three if we include Julie Muir.’
Yeah, that bloody stopped him.
‘You’d best go on ahead,’ Ewart told his pal. ‘I’ll catch you up later.’
The other man nodded and hurried away, glancing back and gesticulating with his mobile.
Ewart let him gain some distance then resumed walking just as briskly. No suggestion that they find a seat or a quiet corner: this guy wanted away, and he didn’t expect to be detained.
Catherine had been a cop twenty years, so she had to delve deep to remember what it felt like to encounter a police officer as a civilian. She recalled always being cautious and wary, polite and cooperative, ever conscious of the potential dangers when power met caprice. Most people she met were at least the first two, even the hardened crooks. The sense of entitlement emanating from this prick was quite staggering.
‘We’ve been speaking to a witness who told us that your relationship with Julie Muir was suppressed at the time of the investigation.’
‘Christ, are you detectives or archaeologists? And if you’re researching ancient history you must
know
it was suppressed, though that makes it sound far more conspiratorial than the truth. It wasn’t deemed relevant; or at least not sufficiently relevant as to be worth exposing my father to the fallout.’
‘When it comes to murder investigations, I’m seldom sure what
is or isn’t going to prove relevant in the final analysis, no matter who gets exposed to “fallout”.’
His pace had slowed a little, Catherine reckoning this was so that it didn’t appear to onlookers that he was trying to get away; better that it just appeared he was chatting casually to two more suits, albeit cheaper ones.
‘Julie was murdered on her way to my parents’ house, but her intended destination was deemed incidental once it became clear what had happened. She never got there that night because of that fucking mong.’
Ewart bared his teeth as he said this, almost daring her to object to his terminology. His aggression was palpable, but was it principally aimed at Sheehan or Catherine?
‘I was interviewed and my relationship with Julie was made known to the investigation. Once Sheehan had confessed the Procurator Fiscal’s office concurred with the police that there was no need to bring me into the court case. My father’s position meant it would have been a sideshow everybody could do without. If my father had been just anybody, then no, I doubt such a courtesy would have been extended, but the fact is that my father wasn’t just anybody.’
‘What about your relationship with Stevie Fullerton?’
Ewart visibly seethed, gripping the handle of his briefcase as an inconspicuous outlet for his anger; just not inconspicuous enough.
‘Don’t you bloody people speak to each other? Because believe me, if you’re out on your own your feet won’t touch—’
‘Forgive me, Mr Ewart,’ Catherine told him. ‘There was an announcement over the PA, so I didn’t quite catch what you said, and I
know
I can’t have heard it properly because it sounded like you were threatening me.’
They had reached the domestic arrivals area. Catherine could see Ewart’s companion waiting for him near the automatic doors leading out to the car parks. Ewart clocked him too, and stopped walking. He turned to face the way he had just come. He didn’t want anyone who knew him to be witness to this discussion.
‘I came forward voluntarily,’ he said. ‘This was all supposed to be cleared up.’
‘You came forward voluntarily about what?’
Ewart sighed.
‘Fullerton had been phoning me, threatening to kick up a stink about my wild days. It was blackmail: sheer opportunism. Cautela had been all over the media and he must have thought I’d pay good money to avoid further bad publicity.’
‘Your wild days?’ Catherine asked, curious to see how much he would cop to. The more candid he was, the more it might suggest he was trying to divert attention from something else.
‘If you’ve spoken to a witness who knew about me and Julie, then I’m sure you already know what Fullerton was alluding to. My association with the notorious Nokturn nightclub: sex, drugs, Fullerton’s own gang connections. Throw in Julie as well and he thought he had a classic tabloid cocktail, light on detail but heavy on innuendo.’
‘So you contacted the police about this?’
‘Yes. And
before
Fullerton was killed, I hasten to add. I got in touch again after that happened, in case anybody was stupid enough to think I had a motive.’
‘You did have a motive,’ Catherine reminded him.
‘Hardly. I told him to fuck off. Called his bluff. He kept at it though: he thought
I
was bluffing. The bastard phoned my mother as well, hoping the potential embarrassment might milk her too. That’s why I went to the police. I made sure I was eliminated. Fullerton’s whole intention was to drag me into the sleaze, and I was damned if he was going to achieve it posthumously. This was all taken care of,’ he added impatiently, like she was being particularly obtuse.
‘Stevie Fullerton’s murder is my investigation, Mr Ewart. Nobody can eliminate you from that except me.’
He gave a humourless, scornful laugh and looked at her with open contempt.
‘What rank did you say you were, officer?’
‘Detective Superintendent.’
‘Then you ought to be asking yourself how far above your pay grade all this happened for it not to have seeped down to your
level. And I’m guessing you’ll find yourself a lot lower still by the time this is all over.’
With that, he turned on his heel and marched off towards his business-class buddy by the doors.
‘A real charmer,’ Laura said. ‘Hard to see why he’s been divorced twice. I’ve never seen somebody so sure his arse was watertight. Who the hell has been telling him that it’s all taken care of?’
‘Especially if Fullerton had been calling the guy making threats shortly before his death,’ Catherine agreed. ‘Which makes me extremely confused as to why this is the first
I’m
hearing about these threats.’
‘I’d heard nothing either,’ Laura assured her. ‘His name never came up before Ciara Flanigan mentioned it. Hang on, though: Ewart said Fullerton phoned him – repeatedly. Why didn’t his number appear on Fullerton’s phone records?’
Catherine suddenly pictured the USB stick she had received, eventually, from the Intelligence bureau via Sunderland.
Via Abercorn.
Laura’s mobile rang. She glanced at the screen then held it up for Catherine to see.
‘I need to take this.’
Laura did a lot of listening, not so much speaking. She glanced across to Catherine every so often, eyes wide, palpably frustrated that her reaction was as much as she could immediately convey, but her expression implied it was worth waiting for.
‘That was Jasmine Sharp,’ Laura reported.
‘Your secret source.’
It had been Laura’s idea to bring Jasmine into play, figuring she might be able to wheedle a little more information via angles otherwise closed off to the investigation. However, it had been Catherine’s idea that Laura should pretend she was going behind her boss’s back, estimating that if Jasmine thought she was working at cross purposes to Catherine it would motivate her to dig all the deeper.
Catherine had taken a disproportionate and perhaps unworthy satisfaction in thus playing the girl, as it felt like she was evening
the score. She harboured an enduring, powerful and instinctive suspicion that Jasmine had in some way screwed her regarding a previous case. She didn’t know quite how and she didn’t have any proof, but she was in little doubt that something about it reeked of deceit.
Jasmine might have an innocent face and look like she’d have difficulty staying upright in a stiff breeze, but she was a sneaky, duplicitous and thoroughly sleekit wee bitch, which was why Catherine had agreed it would be useful to have her
inside
the tent on this one.
‘She claims she can prove Fallan was set up. Sheila Fullerton told her that the story about Stevie and his crew attacking Fallan and leaving him for dead is bollocks. It never happened, so there’s no grudge, no motive – and that’s according to the widow. Jasmine also pointed out that the Land Rover just happened to scrape against the only freshly painted slab at the car wash, conveniently marking it for later identification.’
‘So what?’ Catherine asked, not yet sharing Laura’s sense of portent.
‘The witnesses said the slab scraped the Defender’s passenger door. Fallan’s is a left-hand drive.’
‘Yeah, they
said
passenger side,’ Catherine argued, ‘but presumably they just meant the left-hand side as it was facing the road.’
‘Presumably? Did anybody go back and check which side the gunman was sitting in those CCTV images? The gunman who had taken the precaution of wearing a skull mask and a hood, but was driving to and from a daylight hit in his own car?’
‘I didn’t notice what side he was driving,’ Catherine admitted. ‘In fact, I don’t think I even heard anyone mention that Fallan’s vehicle was a southpaw.’
‘How hard would it be to fit fake plates, or to scrape the side of your patsy’s Land Rover with, say, a half brick painted white? Then your hitman makes sure he bashes that nice white slab on the way out—’
‘Except the paint transferred from the brick wouldn’t chemically match the stuff on the slab,’ Catherine pointed out. ‘The paint on Fallan’s vehicle did.’
‘It would match if it came from the same tin: that’s what Jasmine’s saying.’
Catherine got out her mobile and dialled.
‘Zoe? Do you have the CCTV shots of Fallan’s Land Rover to hand? I need you to look at them and tell me which side of the vehicle the guy in the skull mask is sitting.’
‘Just a sec, boss.’