Father Confessor (J McNee series) (23 page)

After all, it’s not enough to kill a man. No, Wood knew that to really hurt a man like Ernie Bright, you had to destroy him completely.

###

“You’re with the police?”

I shook my head as I clambered out of the car. I had to grip at the bodywork to keep upright. My legs were shaking. The skin across my forehead was stretched tight. My skull ached. How the hell was I still standing?

The man had run from across the road, his head ducked as though afraid of the sky falling on him. He was pale, the kind of pale that comes from being awake early in the morning. He was wearing backless slippers and pyjamas beneath a thick dressing gown. I noticed the ends of the gown’s sleeves were ratty, as though he picked at them.

Judging from his quick, jerky movements, this man was a born worrier, the kind of guy who thought everything through. Probably spent so long thinking about things he missed a lot of opportunities for action.

He stayed down, hiding behind my car. I couldn’t quite figure what he was doing. I turned to look at the old house that had been converted into high-end flats. Said, “What’s happening?”

“I called the police. I mean, I let her in when she showed me her badge. She had business with the Irish lad who moved in on the top floor. That’s what she said, anyway.”

“You know him?”

“Who?”

“The Irish lad. On the top floor.”

The man shook his head. “Only to speak to. Like, in the stairwell or something. He’s not been there long. The girlfriend doesn’t like him much… I dunno, you can’t judge a person on how they look, right?”

“But she was right,” I said.

He said, “I don’t know what’s happening. This policewoman asking to be let in. Then I heard her banging on the door and then…” He was still crouched, and reached up to tug at my jacket as though to pull me down to his level. “… Jesus, there was gunfire. Gunfire, man!”

“How many shots?”

“I thought you weren’t with the police?”

He’d already called them. Which meant I didn’t have time to piss around. I said, “How many shots?”

“Just the one.”

“Pistol? Shotgun? What kind of weapon?”

“How would I know? I’ve lived in the Dee all my life. How many guns d’you think I’ve seen?”

I was tempted to tell him he needed to get out more. Instead, I said, “Stay here. The cops’ll be running in like it’s Armageddon.” Which was true enough. Standard response to a weapons discharge in the city limits was to send all hands to panic stations. They’d be assembling firearms officers, rousing blokes on call from their pits and already someone in PR was preparing press releases to explain the incident. Even though they had no clue as to what was really happening.

I took a deep breath, moved out from behind the car and crossed the road.

Shaking.

Hoping to hell I looked more confident than I felt.

The first time I met Susan, she had taken me to one side and told me I needed to get in the game. That I needed to put up a mask or just get my act together. Back then we’d been little more than friends. Colleagues who got along well enough. And even so, she’d been a stabilising influence in my life, helped me get ahead.

Until we lost track of the boundaries of our relationship. When we came back into each other’s orbits, almost a year after Elaine’s death, she again became a stabilising influence, helping me to process what had happened. She was always in control, always knew what she was doing.

God help anyone who pushed her around.

Which is why I stopped as I walked into Mick the Mick’s front room, unable to grasp exactly what it was that I was seeing: Susan on her knees, her head bowed.

Mick the Mick – a stringy beanpole with greasy hair and an unshaven face that was becoming leathery as he skirted dangerously close to middle age – in front of her, holding a shotgun to her head. “Ya fuckin’ bitch. Think if I could kill yer old man, I couldn’t kill you?” He looked up, suddenly realising he wasn’t alone. “Who the fuck’re you?”

“No-one important.”

“Then get the fuck out.”

“You going to kill her?”

“I’ve killed before.”

“I know. You’re a killer for hire, right? Long way from the good old days. Used to be you slung petty drugs. Now you’re a real hard man.”

He didn’t sense the sarcasm. Or he didn’t care. “You fuckin’ know it.”

“Her father, the copper you killed, he was a friend of mine.”

“Boo-hoo, buddy. Get the fuck out or I blow her head apart.” He jerked the shotgun to make his point, just enough that my eye was drawn to it, not enough that Susan would have a chance to try and take it from him.

Her eyes flicked towards the door. Towards me.

I held my hands out. The kind of gesture you hope is pacifying. “The cops are on their way, Mick. Your pal Wood can’t get you out of this one.”

“Aye, so she said. I’ve been inside. I can do the time.”

“You killed a cop, Mick. Kill her, you’ll have killed two. A two-time cop killer, Mick. Fucking hell, but that’s harsh.”

He took a deep breath. I had his attention. Hard to tell which way he’d jump. I knew his history, enough about his rep. But what I didn’t know was what kind of man he was.

Above all, I wasn’t a trained negotiator. A lot of cops, of course, receive basic training in crisis negotiation, but the specialists are the ones you hope show up on the scene. Because the basic psychological training most officers receive couldn’t help you talk a crisp out of an open bag.

I hadn’t exactly been top of the class.

What did the guidelines say?
Allow the suspect to lead the conversation. Personal feelings intrude on the dialogue – never let the suspect know that he’s getting to you.

I’d never handled a situation like this.

“You let her go, Mick, I’ll vouch for you. We both will. We’ll say that in the end, you did the right thing.”

“Fuck you,” Mick said. “This pig cunt came to kill me.”

I looked at Susan. She didn’t move. Her eyes focussed on one single spot on the floor. Absolute concentration.

I took a step forward.

Every step is a victory.

Mick didn’t seem to notice.

“They’re on their way, Mick,” I said. No bluffing. In the distance, coming closer, you could hear the sirens.

Mick said, “I should move fast, then.”

Susan moved faster. No warning, no tell-tale tension in her muscles or shifting of her weight. She just brought her hands up, as though in supplication, and grabbed at the barrel of the shotgun, twisting her wrists and her body in opposite directions, so that the barrel pointed away from her. Mick’s reaction, jumping back and away from her, helped the process and the barrel swung round and up.

I watched this as though frozen, utterly unable to act.

The flare from the blast as Mick’s finger tripped the trigger blinded me. I’d been in the firing line before. The explosion sounded like an old friend. But it was the impact on my shoulder that surprised me. A giant’s palm shoving me backwards. At first the pain was surprisingly gentle, more like the sting of a bee than the intrusion of white hot shot slicing through flesh. But as I slammed back against the door frame, the sensation radiated outwards, and increased in intensity. My vision flashed white, as though something had exploded in my skull and started to leak behind my eyeballs.

I blinked, finding myself on my arse, back propped against the doorframe. The pain was an intense and frequent throb that covered my right shoulder and down into the upper right of my chest. I moved my left hand up and felt at the centre of the sensation. My fingers came away sticky with blood and even that small pressure made me want to scream.

I battered my head back against the wall. The impact focussed me. At least for a moment. I looked over to the middle of the room, saw Susan on her feet now with Mick the Mick. The way they moved, the gun held between them, was like a parody of a dance.

Slow. Slow. Quick quick. Slow.

Their edges were indistinct as though their bodies were beginning to melt into each other. My vision was messed up. A word ran through my head: concussion.

Fine, I could deal with that.

Had been through worse.

I tried to move. To stand up. But I couldn’t. Paralysed.

My body just giving up. No more.

I had no sensation in my right arm. It was little more than dead weight.

Susan ended the dance. Slammed her knee up between Mick’s legs. Sacrificing her balance but giving him something to think about. Her gamble paid off as Mick doubled and let go his grip on the weapon.

She pulled the shotgun from him, swinging as she did so to catch him under the chin with the stock. The blow knocked him back and off his feet. He skited over the bare floorboards and wound up on his back looking up at the woman with murder in her eyes.

She balanced the gun. Both barrels on the Irishman.

Said, “One shot left.”

Jesus
. Didn’t feel to me like he’d only fired once.

But did he know that?

Did she?

The sirens outside were quiet. I could hear the scramble of armed response officers outside the flat. Pictured one or two of them grinning beneath their helmets, thinking,
finally, some action
. Some of them had to have been looking forward to an incident like this.

Susan steadied the shotgun.

I tried to move. All I could do was raise my left hand. Slowly. Trembling as I did so like an arthritic old man in his last moments.

I said, “Susan,” but it came out like a croak, barely a word.

It was enough, though. She turned to look at me. Her eyes catching mine.

Maybe she saw something in there. Maybe she just realised she couldn’t do this with someone – anyone – watching.

Or maybe she remembered who she was. All those things she had said to me echoing around inside her head, finally and with a kind of clarity that made her lower the shotgun.

I heard a voice outside the door.

“This is Detective Mollison of Tayside Constabulary… I’m talking to the person…”

Susan yelled back, her voice hoarse and broken, “Hey, Molly! It’s Susan Bright. The suspect is… is in my custody.”

She let her arms drop, still holding the gun. Turned towards me. She took a step forward. “Steed?”

I tried to smile. Not sure if that only made me look worse. A corpse’s grimace.

I heard the flat door open.

Saw a movement behind Susan. But the strength I had found before to move, to make a sound, had vanished. All I could was watch as Mick the Mick scrambled to his feet, shoved Susan in the small of the back and made a grab for that gun.

I heard the stamping of feet from behind me. Voices screaming.

Drop the weapon

Drop the weapon

Drop the fucking gun, you bast –

And then a continuous, mechanical drone that ripped apart the inside of my head and turned my brain to jelly.

I closed my eyes. The sound of automatic gunfire brutally massaged my muscles.

When it stopped, there was a gentle ringing noise somewhere in the background of the world.

I thought about opening my eyes. Decided against it.

One moment of ignorance.

I needed it. Figured I deserved it, too.

“You need to take better care of yourself.”

I recognised the doctor. Dark hair, tied back. Heavy Mancunian accent. She’d dealt with me when I hurt my hand two years ago. Another gun-related injury. If I wasn’t careful, people might start to talk.

I couldn’t feel my shoulder. Couldn’t tell what was the anaesthetic and what was the damage done to nerve endings by the spread. Shotgun pellets aren’t like ordinary bullets. They’re filled with shot – tiny, compacted balls of lead – that explode and expand upon release, meaning the closer you are to the weapon the more damage it does. If you’re further away, your wounds might not be so bad, but they’ll be spread across a wider radius.

I’d been far away from the gun, relatively speaking. The other side of a large living room. Don’t know what it was in feet, but whatever, it was far enough that I didn’t get my arm blown off or my head knocked off my neck.

So chances were I’d survive. They got to me in time to prevent too much blood loss at any rate. All I could do was hope there was no permanent nerve damage.

I closed my eyes and laid my head back on the pillow. I’d been in enough hospital beds over the last couple of years to know the feel of them, the pillows that felt yielding and yet strangely stiff; just uncomfortable enough to remind you of the clinical nature of the bed you were in.

The tugs and pulls at my shoulder seemed distant and unimportant.

I floated away from them.

Away from the world.

###

“Oy, cuntybaws, wake up!”

I opened my eyes. Lindsay was staring at me from around the same eye level I was lying at. Took me a moment to realise he was in a wheelchair, dressed in the same clinical gown as me. His face seemed hollow and drawn, and the scars were at the stage where they looked a lot worse than you might have expected. There was something of Frankenstein’s monster about his post-surgery appearance; as if he was patched together out of awkward-fitting body parts.

I figured I’d keep that thought to myself.

“How long have you been about?” I asked.

“Most of last night and this morning,” he said. “They tell me you’re more fucked than me.” He nodded, sagely. “Good.”

I said, “You’ve talked to Mollison?”

“Oh, aye. He’s got some questions for you, lad. You’re in for a proper probing.”

I hoped he didn’t mean literally. “Maybe things are worse than I thought.”

“No, this isn’t hell,” said Lindsay. “Much more shitey than that. This is Dundee.” He grinned.

I closed my eyes.

This time, sleep failed to come.

###

When Mollison came to see me, he said, “Every time you’re involved in a case, our major suspects seem to wind up dead.”

I said, “You can’t blame me for Mick.”

He shook his head. “What about Wood?”

“What about him?”

Mollison shook his head. “There was a fire at the lockup, McNee.”