The Good Son (11 page)

“I was at his house once.”

David Burns. Entrepreneur. In both the legal and illegal senses. An old school hard bastard who made sure the shite never stuck long enough to get him locked up.

“His wife spat in my face. Not for any other reason than I was the first copper she saw.”

Susan said, “The thing is… Burns has been playing up his public image recently. The organised crime days are long gone, so he claims. He's legit. Far as a man like him can get. And why would he go around fouling on his own doorstep?”

“Why, indeed.”

“Do you understand, Steed, the reasons I'm asking you to back off?”

I understood. Didn't mean I cared for it. Call me stubborn. Susan was probably thinking about calling me much worse.

“How about this? I back off. You keep me up to speed.”

I stood up. “The way things are between us, now, I don't owe you an explanation.”

I couldn't sleep.

Lying on top of the bed covers, I turned on the bedside light and watched a spider crawl across the ceiling. A big fellow with a fat body and long legs.

How did he get inside the flat. Where did he live? Where did he think he was going? What was he thinking every time he paused on his journey?

Was he taking stock of his surroundings? Figuring out a plan? Or merely drawing breath?

But he wasn't thinking. He was acting on instinct.

He was thinking after a fashion, of course. But not overdoing it. Not intellectualising or trivialising the reality of his situation.

Realising that made me jealous.

I closed my eyes, tried to empty my mind.

But I kept churning over scenarios and possibilities, still obsessed with a case I should have left behind the moment Robertson scrawled his angry signature on the cheque.

I'd spent seven years on the force. Not a lifetime,
but long enough to know when I was being lied to. And when someone was telling me the truth. Susan knew it, too. And Lindsay.

James Robertson hadn't killed Katrina Egg. He'd thought about it, I was sure. But he hadn't done it.

But if not him, then who?

The attack had been bloody and violent. Malicious. No hesitation. No doubt. It was planned.

Like Susan said: professional.

And yet, enough ferocity that it still felt… personal.

I couldn't leave it alone. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have backed away long before now, but I had this urge to keep pressing forward. I'd told Susan to keep me updated. Saying, if she did that then I'd leave it alone.

Even that compromise left me itching.

I didn't have all the answers my ex-client had asked for.

Daniel had been on the run. Why else would he come back? Not because of lingering guilt. Certainly not because of any family connections. Look at the reaction to his father's heart attack.

It had been panic. He had nowhere else to turn.

I remembered the voice of the man at the club. His tone had darkened when I mentioned Daniel.

Danny-boy, what did you do?

Was it really something as simple as sleeping with the boss's wife?

But then, she hadn't seemed nervous when she stood in my office. Not in that way. Concerned, perhaps, for Daniel, worried about what he'd done. But surely she would have been as scared of her husband as anyone else. She would have known he was capable of killing her.

I felt like I was close to some revelation, but couldn't quite clear that final hurdle. I tried to sleep, thinking my mind could sort itself out on its own. But it didn't work. I couldn't get still. Couldn't stop thinking.

Everything came back to what Daniel Robertson had done. The thing that got him fired from the club had been what killed him. What fucked up his brother's life. What killed Kat, the woman who had claimed she loved him.

There were answers to all my questions. But I feared they were in the grave.

At eight o'clock, I awoke to hear my mobile ringing on the bedside table through in the other room. Rolling off the sofa and struggling to my feet, I found I'd fallen asleep the wrong way. My muscles were stiff. The only movements I could coax from them were tentative and uncertain.

Nevertheless, I limped through to the bedroom and took the call.

“I want to talk to you,” Robertson said.

“About the report?”

“Face to face. I think I know who killed that woman.”

“You should call the police,” I said, deferring to common sense. “Talk to DI Lindsay. He'll be able to —”

“I can't… I… Christ, McNee, I don't know if I can talk to the police.” He sounded ready to break down in tears. Maybe he already had.

I took a deep breath, thought about what had happened to Kat. The fear in Robertson's voice was
transparent. I said, “Okay, we'll talk,” and named a café where we could meet.

He hung up without saying goodbye.

I wasn't going back on my word if I talked to him. At the very least I could tell him what Susan had told me. His problems couldn't be solved by private parties. The police weren't out to crucify him, they were out to find the truth.

And I could do nothing else to help him.

My part was over. I wasn't going to get involved.

And I wondered if, like me, he'd find my resolution hollow.

The Washington Café on Union Street was small, with green, vinyl-covered pews and plastic tables. It shouldn't have survived past 1950 and as such felt homely and welcoming. Like a time capsule. It was comforting to think that among all the changes that had occurred in the city centre, some places just kept on going.

Robertson had slipped behind a table at the rear. I ordered a black coffee for myself. The wee woman behind the till told me she'd bring it over.

I sat opposite Robertson, who sipped from a mug of milky-white tea. His eyes were supported by bags. I knew how he felt.

His hands shook, in danger of letting his cup slip from between his fingers. I could smell the whisky on his breath.

“You didn't sound good on the phone,” I said.

“I had no reason to sound good.”

“You've been holding back since our first consultation. There's something else going on.”

“No. Nothing else.” I would have believed him except his eyes were focused on the plastic table top and his voice trembled despite his best efforts at composure.

“If you know something…”

“Last night I got a phone call.” He looked up at me again. Bloodshot eyes made him look like he'd drunk enough booze to re-float the
Titanic
. “A Cockney accent, you know, like that bloody
EastEnders
shite.” He sipped from his cup, winced. Then blew on the hot liquid to cool it down. “Asking about my brother.”

“You mean his suicide?”

“No. This… this bastard…told me my brother had stolen something.”

“Like what?”

“Like money. I don't know how much,” Robertson said, and I thought he was a little too quick with that information. “He just said money. That was all. He said I knew where it was.”

“You don't know what he was talking about?”

“The first time I saw my brother in over thirty years was when I found him hanging from a tree, Mr McNee.”

“This man on the phone, did he say anything else?”

“He said to wait and they'd be in touch.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Are you no listening, you stupid bloody eejit!”

I sat back. Folded my arms. Waited.

Finally: “It wasn't
what
he said.”

I nodded. “You should go to the police.”

“You said. And tell them what? They've got their hands full looking into that woman's murder. And they suspect me of that, as well. Calling the police isn't going to do any good, McNee.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Your advert said you do security work. So I want your services on another job. Security.”

“Securing you?”

“Aye.”

“Like a bodyguard?”

“Aye. Like a bodyguard.” Talking slowly, as if I was a child.

I shook my head. “Mr Robertson, you're right. You need protection. But you should go to the police. Hiring private security is all well and fine, but I still recommend that—”

“Whatever,” he said. “I'm no going to the police.”

I wanted back in. Even if it meant I would be stepping out of my depth.

At the very least, I had to make a gesture of hesitance. I owed Susan that, at least.

“Okay.” I pulled out my phone. “I'm going to give you some numbers. Professional security guys, people with experience in this—”

“I don't want them on the job.”

“Sure, but I don't have the experience that—”

He stood up. “I'm asking for your help,” he said, his voice loud enough that it attracted attention from the other diners. “Because I don't trust anyone else to deal with this. I don't know these people whose numbers you've got on your phone. And I definitely don't trust the police any more than they're going to trust what I tell them.” He stepped out from the booth. “Cash the bloody cheque, you parasitic bastard, before I cancel it.”

Maybe he expected me to follow him. But I stayed where I was, cupping my coffee between my hands and waiting until I heard him leave.

He was scared, and I couldn't blame him for that.
But his refusal to even think about approaching the police was what intrigued me. Any normal citizen with nothing to hide wouldn't have thought twice about approaching the boys in blue, but Robertson had refused point blank. It wasn't the phone call that had scared him. Something else was preying on his mind.

They never caught the man who killed Elaine.

They didn't even know if he was a man.

That's the way the world is, sometimes. Resolutions are a long time coming, if they ever come at all. And sometimes you find yourself asking the universe, “why?”

I understood why Martin Barrow blamed me for his daughter's death. In the moments before the accident, we'd been fighting. It had been a stupid fight and I wish she was still around so we could have more of them.

Elaine's father, sitting in the back seat, had been on her side, probably wishing he could just punt me out the door.

If he had, maybe things would have worked out differently.

After the accident, they referred me to a psychiatrist.

At first it had been optional. Grief counselling. But
I'd been stubborn and insisted that I was fine. That returning to work was the best way for me to deal with what had happened.

And then I'd broken a DI's nose.

In part because I didn't like the man.

But also because he told me what I already knew, and what I'd already dismissed: they couldn't find the man in the other car.

The doctor who saw me was a tall man with curly hair and Michael Caine glasses. He was skeletally thin and wore cords in an attempt to be ironic. He spoke slowly, with the gentle lilt of Aberdeen hiding somewhere in his words.

“You felt good when you punched the DI?”

This was maybe our second or third session, and I guess he believed that by then we should have made some connection. I should have been comfortable talking to him. He was the kind of man people liked talking to.

Truth was, I thought he was an arrogant prick who'd never known the kind of agony you go through when you lose someone so senselessly. Learned everything in the classroom. Passed his exams with flying colours. Fooled them into thinking he had some kind of empathy with people.

He didn't fool me.

In spite of that, I made an attempt to open up. “Anyone would feel good, breaking that fucker's nose.”

“He's not popular?”

“He's not a people person.”

The doctor sat in a leather chair with a reclining back. He tucked his left leg up underneath him. Trying to look relaxed. But it was an act. Like everything else about him. If he was a good psychiatrist,
he made me think they were all a bunch of con-artists.