Authors: Chris Brookmyre
‘Thanks,’ he managed cautiously.
The guy in the tracksuit glanced at him but said nothing in response.
‘There’s a man wants a word with you,’ said the driver.
Anthony was sitting on the floor of the morgue surrounded by boxes, folders and yellowing pages, munching a McIntosh Red, the closest link to a computer in his immediate environment. He was down in the basement of HQ, where the more ancient case files were kept; dumped would be more accurate. These days such materials were carefully stored and indexed, some documents even available digitally, but for matters pertaining to quarter of a century ago he had to brave this cluttered oubliette.
The system gave a deceptive impression of order and efficiency. He had been able to do cross-reference searches from the comparative comfort of his desk, the computer listing files in a way that suggested they would be neatly and conveniently arranged when he went down to pick them up.
Ha. That had been hours ago. Or maybe days.
On the plus side, he could at least munch a couple of apples at his leisure without worrying about Zoe Vernon snaffling the rest of the bag.
A cross-reference on James Donnelly had unsurprisingly brought up several results; indeed Anthony would have expected more, but the most recent dated from only a couple of months after the nightclub fracas. Then he remembered McLeod mentioning that Donnelly was two decades missing, presumed dead, rumoured to have been murdered by Glen Fallan.
The unnamed source had been wrong, as it turned out, about nobody testifying. Despite James Donnelly claiming not to recognise – in fact not to have even seen – his assailant, Thomas Beattie was identified by multiple witnesses, and sentenced to three years.
Anthony had Beattie’s file open on the floor too, and it was less coy about aliases. The son of veteran Gallowhaugh hard case Tam Beattie, he was known as Tam Junior, but more frequently as Stanley, after his favoured means of leaving his mark. It wasn’t simply a Stanley knife either, but a weapon comprising two blades taped together, kept apart by a fifty pence piece. This was so that the surgeons couldn’t stitch the parallel wounds cleanly, guaranteeing a wide, ugly and very permanent scar.
Anthony got to learn Donnelly’s nickname too, as well as confirming that he and his brother David, aka Doke, were Stevie Fullerton’s cousins. Completing what the police believed to be the inner circle in those days had been Stevie’s brother Nicholas, or Nico. Anthony had never heard of him, and it turned out he had been murdered back in 1987.
Also named on a list of known associates was Glen Fallan.
Stanley Beattie lasted less than a month after getting out on parole. He bled to death on the floor of a pub in Shawburn, ironically killed by what the coroner described as a defensive wound. He had held up an arm to stop a blade aimed at his face, only for it to open his wrist instead. Predictably, the investigation focused on James Donnelly. From this perspective it was clear that the reason he didn’t name his assailant at Nokturn was because this was the only justice he was interested in.
Anthony looked at the photographs of Donnelly clipped inside one of the files, pictured before and after scar. He looked like a candidate for a boyband: handsome and cocksure. Sexy and I know it. He was reputedly a ladies’ man. Also reputedly volatile, with a notoriously short fuse. According to statements, his temper often had to be reined in by his brother or the ever-pragmatic Fullertons. The Fullertons were all business, the file said. James, on the other hand, was all about James. He was spoilt, the good-looking baby of the family, used to getting attention. Not so used to hearing the word no.
The Shawburn Inn was precisely the kind of place somebody could be slashed without any of the drinkers or the staff being prepared to admit they saw anything. However, as fate would have it, the incident took place in full view of a sales rep from the brewery, a woman by the name of Linda Conway. As well as being able to describe the attack, and identifying Donnelly from photographs, she informed the police that the assailant had been in the company of a young woman.
Donnelly’s alibi was that he had been at home with his girlfriend, but the file testified to the investigating officers’ growing confidence that they could prevail upon her to come clean. They were sure the girlfriend was being pressured into lying out of a combination of loyalty and fear, and her story didn’t stand up. They knew she was working at the local community centre, fifty yards from the Shawburn Inn, and the attack happened less than an hour after she clocked off.
When he read her name he almost choked on his apple.
Laura drove them past the railway station and took a left down a broad, tree-lined avenue, bordered either side by properties set back so far that only the occasional flash of sandstone could be glimpsed through gaps in the foliage. Then she turned right into a greyer, narrower street, a cul-de-sac that looked cut off from the blood supply that was richly colouring its surroundings.
Miner’s Row was a tiny outcrop of (predominantly ex-) council housing on the verdant periphery of the enduringly affluent suburb of Capletmuir. It sat on the south-eastern outskirts of Glasgow, as the crow flies only a few miles from the schemes of Gallowhaugh, Shawburn and Croftbank, but a few light years in terms of social mobility. In fact, it might as well have existed in another dimension, and Catherine guessed Capletmuir’s residents would have preferred that, particularly when it came to the premiums for contents insurance.
She was pretty sure Capletmuir was where Campbell Ewart had lived, or at least did when he was Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in the Thatcher cabinet. As she recalled, his home was often the subject of humorous comment because it was perilously close to the constituency border, back in a time when there was such a thing as a safe Tory seat in the west of Scotland; or indeed any Tory seats at all.
In those days, Capletmuir used to be known locally as ‘the hamlet’, an enclave of opulent villas built in picturesque meadowland during the early nineteenth century by the merchants of the empire. These days, so many new private housing developments had sprung up around it that it was the dowdy Miner’s Row that was the isolated hamlet in their midst.
It seemed a good fit: Brenda Sheehan’s number had been the conspicuous anomaly on the list of Stevie Fullerton’s mobile phone calls, a curious outlier among a familiar roster of known associates. Officers had been despatched to interview those who hadn’t been contacted already, but Catherine didn’t expect they would be any more forthcoming than their predecessors. This was why she had opted to tag along and provide corroboration when Laura spoke to Sheehan; that and the opportunity to share their confidential impressions of how the case was going, rather than the versions they presented to the squad and the brass.
They also had the list of Fallan’s phone activity, which was unrevealing but for the curious fact that Jasmine Sharp had been in touch in the hours either side of his hitting Fullerton. What this indicated in the light of Beano’s discoveries, she wasn’t sure.
‘It’s been a longstanding nugget – and I think nugget is the appropriate word – of Glasgow bam lore that Fallan “disappeared” Jazz Donnelly,’ Catherine told Laura. ‘And that then Stevie Fullerton disappeared Fallan as payback for his cousin, albeit the latter’s case of death turned out to be of the extremely rare “non-fatal” strain. I take the point that Fallan waited a very long time to commence the next round of “to me, to you”, but his relationship with Jasmine Sharp might somehow have provided the catalyst. She was certainly the reason he finally blew cover a couple of years ago.’
‘I’ll admit I’ve been reluctant to rule out the idea that this was a paid gig,’ Laura admitted. ‘That Fallan was the means rather than the motive. But the fact that he got sloppy suggested otherwise. If somebody hired him to take out Fullerton, he wouldn’t have made the mistakes he did. Using his own car, doing it in front of witnesses, mask or not: it seemed hurried, improvised. But if he was rash and reckless because of the girl, it starts to get clearer.’
‘He’s always been
very
protective of her,’ said Catherine. ‘And I don’t just mean that as a figure of speech: I’m talking body language, like he’s ready to take a bullet, or at least loose off a few.’
‘You don’t think…?’
‘There’s certainly something at the heart of that strange wee triangle: Donnelly, Yvonne Sharp and Fallan. Has your top-secret inside source turned up anything interesting?’
‘Too early to say, but I’ll keep you posted.’
Laura stopped right outside the address, there being no shortage of kerbside parking on Miner’s Row. Most of the front gardens had been amended to include a driveway at the side, with Brenda Sheehan’s one of the few falling into the non-monoblocked minority. They climbed out of the car into the autumn sunshine, Catherine immediately conscious of being monitored from across the road, where a wiry old woman in gardening gloves was peering over her hedge.
Sheehan’s house was the left-hand part of a non-symmetrical semi, its drab roughcasting an almost absurdly stark contrast with the pointed brickwork of its right half. Indeed, the place was distinct in having a conspicuous absence of exterior improvements sufficient to suggest the council was still her landlord. Her grass looked in need of a cut, though it had not risen beyond the level that would have had Catherine nagging Drew. It was only marginally longer than on the postage stamp of lawn that remained next door, where the plot had been landscaped within an inch of its life.
The layout of Sheehan’s garden probably hadn’t been altered since the place was built: lawns front and back, with a grey path leading to the front door and around to the rear, the concrete slabs flanked by thinning gravel and punctuated by thicker moss.
Catherine had a glance up and noted that the venetian blinds were drawn over the first-floor windows. She checked her watch. George Osborne would not have approved.
Laura pressed the doorbell. Catherine guessed, just from the tone of it, that nobody was home. She had rung a thousand of these things in her time, and you could usually tell. Anything generating sound or movement inside could have a slight dampening effect to the experienced ear, but this was reverberating with absolute clarity indicative of silence and stillness within.
She strode across the lawn and had a peek through the downstairs windows. The venetian blinds were partially closed but she could still peer through the slits between, shading her brow with her hand against the reflected glare of watery sunshine. She saw discarded newspapers, full ashtrays and empty bottles, like the aftermath of a late but not particularly uproarious party.
‘Ghosts of bottles past,’ she muttered, quoting a song she had heard Drew playing the other day.
Laura gave the bell another try, but to neither’s surprise there was no response. Sheehan hadn’t answered her mobile either, the recorded message saying it was switched off.
Laura nodded to Catherine to indicate the approach of the woman in the gardening gloves, heading across the street with an inquisitive but purposeful expression.
‘Think we’re about to get chibbed by the neighbourhood watch,’ Laura said.
‘I reckon we can take her,’ Catherine replied. ‘Between us, anyway.’
‘I don’t know: those secateurs look badass.’
They both turned and walked out to greet the concerned-looking neighbour.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘would you be looking for Brenda? Brenda Sheehan?’
‘That’s right. We’re the police. We were hoping we could speak to her,’ Catherine said, guessing from her expression that the little lady had pegged them as polis as soon as they stepped out of the car, which was why she barely looked at the proffered warrant card. She wore a smile that was polite but tinged with worry, which didn’t augur well.
‘See, you don’t like to be nosy, but the thing is, I haven’t seen her in a couple of days, and those blinds have been the same all that time.’
‘Do you see her quite a bit?’ Laura asked.
‘Oh, yes. I’m always out in my garden. I see her coming back from the shops most mornings. She goes to eight o’clock mass at St Stephen’s, every day, and gets her shopping on the way home. That’s why I was starting to get a bit concerned. I rang the door yesterday as well, but…’
Catherine and Laura traded a look.
‘What’s your name?’ Laura asked.
‘Mari. Lamont. Mrs.’
‘Well, Mrs Lamont, we’ll have a wee look and see what we can see. For just now, I’d recommend you go back to your garden and we’ll let you know whatever we find out.’
‘Thank you. I’d appreciate it.’
She retreated, looking all the more apprehensive than upon her approach.
‘I think that’s good enough reason to force an entry, what do you think?’ Catherine asked.
‘You’re the boss.’
They took a walk around the back, where a cursory try revealed the back door to be unlocked.
Catherine went first into the kitchen, where she was immediately assailed by a rotting smell. It wasn’t what she feared – not yet, at least. It was only food: unwashed plates in and around the sink, and the debris of takeaway and ready-meal cartons spilling from the top of an over-full bin.
She spied a twelve steps poster on the back of the door leading out of the kitchen, while on one wall hung a framed print of a burning candle above the legend ‘One Day at a Time’. There was a sacred heart on the wall opposite, as well as a crucifix on a plinth sitting on the windowsill next to the sink.
There were also an awful lot of empties.
‘Looks like somebody came off the wagon at quite a lick,’ Laura remarked.
Catherine proceeded cautiously out into the hall, where the dust bunnies hugging the skirting boards looked like they were on steroids. In places the carpet crunched underfoot, with crumbs and other debris trodden into the pile. The place didn’t look to be neglected, however: the walls were brightly painted and the carpet itself looked like it would scrub up well if it got some TLC from Mr Dyson.