Flesh Wounds (40 page)

The file ended there, the words ‘Play again?’ in the centre of the screen reading like a dare under the circumstances.

‘This is toxic,’ Catherine stated.

‘No shit,’ agreed Beano, his tone acknowledging that an ordinary day at work was in the first throes of turning into a major crisis with ramifications for all their careers.

‘This doesn’t prove anything in and of itself,’ Catherine said. ‘The DCC can plausibly argue that all it shows is that he was present as the junior partner while his senior colleague persuaded a witness, who may conceivably have been lying or mistaken – certainly unreliable – to alter her story.’

‘Aye, but given that Brenda Sheehan and Stevie Fullerton are now both dead, and the case files are missing…’

‘Quite,’ Catherine answered.

‘You asked why there isn’t a copy of this video on the laptop,’ Beano reminded her. ‘I think there probably was, until very recently. Paul Clayton said they were getting pressure from upstairs to make sure there was nothing compromising to LOCUST on Fullerton’s computer. I’m guessing that pressure was coming from Drummond in order to get the laptop away from us.’

‘But what if
they
found the video file?’ Adrienne asked.

‘LOCUST wouldn’t have looked twice at it, especially if a glimpse just showed an old woman talking. Nor would they have been particularly suspicious if the DCC said he wanted a wee poke through the laptop himself.’

‘We’ll never know,’ Catherine admitted. ‘But if it’s true, it’s not the only thing he’s tried to erase.’

She indicated the printouts sitting beneath the laptop on her desk.

‘Stevie Fullerton’s phone records were amended by Drummond. He removed the number of Gordon Ewart, Cautela Group senior executive and son of Campbell Ewart, the former Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. What is less well known about Gordon Ewart is that he was dating Julie Muir at the time of her murder. Ewart told us that Fullerton had been blackmailing him, threatening to make a stink in the press over his coke-sniffing wild years and his connection to the killing, but I’m starting to think Stevie was threatening to expose something bigger.’

‘Cairns and Drummond had an educationally subnormal suspect in custody for however long they needed,’ observed Adrienne. ‘No lawyer, no witnesses, no tape recorders back then.’

Catherine recalled Ciara Flanigan’s words, the conspiracy theory Stevie Fullerton was hawking at Julie’s funeral:
Girlfriend of a cabinet minister’s son gets murdered and the polis conveniently lock up the local weirdo for it.

‘We all need to take a breath here,’ she warned them, ‘and step extremely cautiously from this point forwards. Like I said, this video proves nothing. On its own, it’s more dangerous to us right now than to the DCC. Especially as we don’t know what his role in all of this is.’

‘So how do you want to play it?’ asked Beano.

‘I want to light a fire under him and see how he reacts, but I’m not going upstairs to chap on his door. I don’t think I need to stress that we’ll be flying under the radar here.’

‘Secretly investigating the Deputy Chief Constable? No boss, you don’t need to stress that. What do you want us to do?’

‘I want you to compare both versions of these phone records, find out if there was anyone else Drummond didn’t want us to know Stevie was speaking to. And as it’s unlikely we’re ever going to see the investigation files again, I want you to look through the court records of the case. I’ll ask Dom Wilson at the Procurator Fiscal’s office if he can get somebody to dig them up. I’ll be speaking to him anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m going to get him to release Glen Fallan.’

It was close to noon when he finally emerged from the close, the blue doorway tucked between a late-night kebab shop and a grim-looking computer repair and game-exchange joint. Clearly he had been up at the crack of half-eleven, ambling bleary-eyed along the street at an unhurried pace.

It was going to be a foot follow, which wasn’t ideal on her own, but less conspicuous than a vehicle pursuit. Jasmine had always suspected it would be a foot follow. Somehow she couldn’t picture Ned Untrusty having his own wheels, other than for the brief period between stealing them and fencing them off at the nearest chop shop.

She climbed out of the surveillance van and got into step roughly twenty yards behind him. She was dressed in what she considered her Velma costume, intended to make her look inconspicuously dowdy. Her hair was tucked under a beret chosen for its complete lack of aesthetic merit, and she had donned an equally drab overcoat and a pair of glasses to complete the look. This guy had to have studied what she looked like in order to ID her at the Alhambra and make his move. She couldn’t afford to be recognised as she would only get one shot. If he made her, it was over.

Jasmine was aware that she was disproportionately fixated upon this. It wasn’t some amazing lead, yet she had been almost giddy with the rush when the information came through from Harry Deacon’s contact in print analysis.

‘The chancer who stole your phone is called Billy Darroch,’ she was informed. ‘He lives upstairs from PC Clinic at 248 Carswell Road.’

She finally had a name for the slimebag who had swiped her sim, which meant she had a possible link to whoever was behind the Fullerton shooting. It was tentative at best, but as long as she was pursuing it then that meant the investigation wasn’t over, and she achingly needed that to be the case.

She had spent yesterday on a shift for Galt Linklater, sitting in a van outside a house in Pollokshields, watching for a subject who never emerged. His curtains didn’t even open. Bastard must have cosied up with a duvet and a DVD boxset while she sat there and stared at a never-changing scene. To be honest, it was a bit of a result: it was money in the bank and she wouldn’t have been on her game had a follow been required. She had been listless to the point of depression, bereft of energy and feeling at best numb, at worst hovering constantly on the verge of tears.

She felt assailed by a crushing sense of disappointment and anticlimax. This quest she had been on for most of her life had ultimately led her to an empty place, from where there appeared to be nowhere else to go. She had pulled back the curtain and discovered the true nature of the Great Oz. For so long she had been desperate to know who her father was, and to find out the truth about her mother’s life before she was born. She had finally discovered the answers to her questions, but had learned nothing that changed how she felt.

On top of that, there was the inescapable conclusion that she’d been had. When she called Laura Geddes with her findings, if she was being honest, she didn’t know how she expected to feel. She wasn’t looking for a junior sheriff’s badge and a pat on the head, but as soon as she imparted the information she felt hollow, suddenly aware she had eagerly handed over the fruits of her labours and got nothing in return. Laura had sounded intrigued and grateful, but her manner was markedly different from when she had visited the flat.

‘I’ll pass this stuff on right away,’ Laura had said. ‘I’m with Catherine just now. She’ll be very interested in what you’ve just told me.’

Catherine, not McLeod. She didn’t sound cagey and tense, concerned about her boss going off the rails. She sounded energised and confident, eager to receive her own pat on the head.

That was when Jasmine sussed that she’d been played. It seemed embarrassingly obvious now, but kudos to Laura for her performance. There was no way she was ever going behind her boss’s back, but Jasmine had bought it, and she’d paid for it with a load of unbillable hours, doing McLeod’s job for her gratis. McLeod must have been in on it from the start, the torn-faced fucking cow.

This was why she needed to follow Billy Darroch. It was the only angle she had left, the one thing she hadn’t handed over to the cops. This would keep her foot across the threshold of the investigation, just enough to stop the door closing.

He was not a taxing subject. Short of wearing a hi-viz vest, there was little else he could have done to improve his visibility. He was dressed in a crimson hoodie: Little Red Riding Ned. Not only did it make him easy to eyeball from distance, but the hood restricted his peripheral vision so he was unlikely to catch a sideways glance. Plus there was something conspicuous about his gait, a gallus waddle like he owned the pavement, all elbows and bobbing head. If only all of her marks were this easy.

A wee bit less slick and sneaky when you’re not the one preying on the unwary, eh Billy?

He headed into the low-level station just past the new Nando’s, buying a ticket at the window. His nasal voice was horribly familiar as he asked for his ticket, giving her a shudder as it took her back to his disingenuous solicitude at the Alhambra.

She followed him down to the platform and got on to the same carriage of a train bound for Lanark. He had bought a Roundabout day pass, so she had to remain close as she didn’t know where he would be getting off. Central Station probably, either to change trains or for a wander through the town. She tried not to think of what kind of afternoon might lie ahead of her, following him around a tour of various Cash Converters and second-hand electronics shops; or of how unlikely it was that he’d meet with anybody involved in setting up Fallan.

He didn’t get off at Central though, or Argyle Street. He stayed on as the train passed beneath the city centre and continued south-east. She looked at the list of stops along the line taking the train ultimately to Lanark: among them Croftbank, Shawburn High St, Shawburn East, Gallowhaugh.

Darroch alighted at the first of these, making a call on his mobile as he ambled along the platform. Jasmine kept her distance as only a handful of other passengers had got off here, so she wasn’t close enough to earwig what he was talking about.

Croftbank: this was where her mother grew up, where she had gone to school with Stevie Fullerton, where Stevie and his crew had drunk in the Bleacher’s Vaults, and where the Bleacher’s Vaults had become Sheila Fullerton’s pride and joy, the Old Croft Brasserie.

Darroch made his way out of the station’s main exit and turned right, in the direction of the Bleachfield Centre, about half a mile away. It was a massive new shopping development, combining a make-over for an existing seventies-built horror with a modern extension. The Bleachfield Centre was dominated by a new Tesco but also accommodated several thousand square feet of retail outlets, many of which showed true pioneering spirit in coming to this part of the planet. If Billy was off for lunch at Wagamama, Jasmine thought, then the world truly no longer made sense.

She maintained her distance as he proceeded with no deviation, definitely heading for the shopping mall. There were very few pedestrians, most people arriving at Bleachfield by car, but he remained oblivious of her pursuit, yakking away into his phone.

He took a right turn down a narrow gap between a warehouse and the high concrete perimeter wall of a light industrial unit. Shit. It was a shortcut and she’d have to take it too as she couldn’t afford to be too far behind when he ventured into the throng of the Bleachfield Centre at lunchtime.

Fortunately there was a transit van with its rear doors thrown wide so as to take up most of the narrow alley, and Darroch was almost past it by the time she made the turn. It meant that she could use the vehicle as cover by walking closer to the far wall, Darroch having walked alongside the near. There was a chubby guy in overalls standing to the left-hand side, blocking the passage, but he closed the door as she approached and stepped back against the wall, gesturing for her to pass.

Darroch came back into her line of sight once again, nearing the junction at the far end as she reached the rear of the van. Then she felt two strong hands at her back and she was driven forwards through the open door on the right-hand side of the vehicle’s rear. The tailgate hit her at thigh level and she tumbled forward onto the plywood floor, scrambling and spinning as the man in overalls came barrelling in after her, pulling the other door closed at his back.

She had just about righted herself and climbed on to all fours when he sent a heavy arm forward and launched his fist into her face. She saw a blur of movement, her eyes unable to focus as her head whipped to the side at a ferocious pace, then felt a second blow as her shoulder slammed into the wall.

He was on her again even as she bounced against the metal, sending three more punches into the same side of her head. She could taste blood and feel something solid rattling around inside her mouth as she collapsed, then sensed the van begin to move just before she passed out.

By Catherine’s estimate, Fallan’s shoes would barely have hit the pavement before she got the call from the DCC, demanding to see her in his office. She had known that news of this development would get back to him swiftly, as that had been her intention, but she was trying not to think of what this said about how long she might hope to keep certain other undertakings from his notice.

Ordinarily, she would have taken the stairs, giving herself time to clear her head and prepare for the imminent confrontation, but his tone warned her that anything other than the express route would be interpreted as insubordination. Ignoring the logic that making him wait was going to be the least of her transgressions, she opted to take the lift.

She felt an instinctive reluctance to step inside when its doors slid apart, revealing the empty chamber within. The silence of it and the sense of isolation further added to the feeling that she was being conveyed automatically towards her judgment. Keep the heid, she told herself, shouting down the voices that were asking what the hell she was doing, warning her that she was poking a very big tiger.

I’ve poked bigger, she reminded them.

Adrienne had discovered three more numbers deleted from Fullerton’s mobile phone records. One, as anticipated, belonged to Gordon Ewart’s mother, Philippa. A second had been traced to the name Colin Morrison, but as it was a common name and they hadn’t yet been able to get in touch, that was all they had on him so far. But the third deleted number had provided no such impediments. It belonged to one Mitchell Drummond.