The Stone Gallows (10 page)

Joe was waiting for me outside the locker room. ‘Come on. We're going for a drive.'

I fell in step as we made our way to the car park. ‘Where to, sir?'

‘Social call.'

We commandeered a pool car, and Joe told me to drive, ‘So as I can tell you what's going on.

‘We're going to see a couple of lads. Jerry and Derek McConnell.

They're twins, and they're about the same size as you. They're seventeen years old, and they've both got juvenile arrest records as long as my arm. . . in fact, as long as your arm. Vandalism, fighting, anti-social behaviour, car theft. Both of them have been caught carrying blades. Do you remember the case of Vijay Sarwar?'

I did. Two years ago, the poor kid had been stabbed on his way home from school and damn near died. It happened on a street full of witnesses, but all of them were Indian and under the age of fourteen and wouldn't say a word. The incident aggravated racial tensions in the area, and the media didn't help by implying that the police didn't take what had happened as seriously as they would have if it had been a white boy that had been attacked.

Joe nodded. ‘That was Jerry and Derek. But nobody will go on the record for fear of reprisals. And even if they did, both boys were under sixteen at the time. All they'd get is a slap on the wrists and learn not to get caught.

‘I only found out about the Vijay Sarwar thing because I've been digging into their backgrounds anyway. There's been a spate of muggings on Pollokshaws Road over the past five weeks. Always on a Friday or Saturday, always early in the morning, sometime between the hours of three fifteen and three forty-five, always in the five hundred yards between the Esso garage and the bingo hall, which, coincidentally or not, is also where Jerry and Derek live. You know what I'm thinking?'

I did. ‘The three o'clock bus.'

‘Clever lad.'

Glasgow's a town that lives for the weekend, and throughout the nineties, late night buses ran all over the city. For the princely sum of one pound seventy-five, you could always get home after a night out.

The Pollokshaws bus route terminated right in the middle of that particular area. The time frame was perfect as well.

Joe continued. ‘All the victims were passengers on that bus, so I showed the McDonnell brothers' mugshots to some of the drivers, and they all confirm that the boys are also frequent fliers, always getting off at that stop. I reckon they have a night out on the town and then use the bus journey home to pick a victim. Of course, a good defence lawyer will point out that there is absolutely no law against two of our great city's youths using public transport to travel home after a pleasant evening of drinking mint juleps at the youth club disco.'

I almost laughed at that, but managed to keep it in check, my eyes fixed firmly on the road. From the speed of his speech and the way he didn't pause to check whether or not I was listening, I suspected that Detective Banks was the kind of guy that preferred all questions to be left until the end of the presentation.

‘Every single victim has been female and alone. There's been nine incidents that we know about, and the assailants are described as being unusually tall, wearing hooded tops and scarves. That sound like anybody I've described to you?'

I guessed I wasn't supposed to answer, so I nodded, keeping my eyes on the road. You weren't allowed to smoke while on duty, but that didn't stop Joe from lighting a cigarette. He pointed it at me while he talked. ‘So far, the attacks show a classic pattern of escalating violence.

The first two victims were just relieved of personal property, the next two were struck from behind before being forced to the ground. Since then, they've started frog-marching girls to cashline machines, forcing them to withdraw more cash, and then knocking seven shades of shit out of them.' He puffed on his cigarette. ‘Their last attack showed another escalation.'

‘In what way sir?'

‘Sexual. On Saturday night they grabbed a twenty year old girl and went through the usual routine. Cash and then a kicking. But then they dragged her to a piece of wasteground and ripped her top off.

Told her they were going to rape her, that she was asking for it going about dressed like a tart. Of course, she fought back, managed to pull the scarf off one of them. She recognised Jerry McConnell. She said she scratched hell out of his cheek.

He blew out a plume of smoke. ‘I personally wouldn't be sorry if she'd scratched the little bastard's eye out.'

‘What happened then?'

He shrugged. ‘She ran. . . all the way to the A & E department of the Western Infirmary. She told them what had happened, and I was the one that interviewed her. The poor lass was a mess. They really did a job on her. Broken nose, broken cheekbone, fractured wrist. She agreed that she would testify against them, but she phoned me this morning in tears. After a bit of prompting, she told me that she got a message saying that if she did testify against them, they would do to her wee sister what they failed to do to her. Her wee sister's only thirteen, by the way.'

‘So. . . nice guys, then.'

‘Salt of the earth. And of course, you know how defence lawyers treat a young woman who goes out and has a couple of drinks in anything more revealing than a suit of armour. They'll say she was begging for it, then changed her mind halfway through.'

‘But there would have been DNA under her fingernails.'

Joe shook his head. ‘You know what A&E's like at half past four on a Sunday morning. Half the bloody city's there with an alcohol related injury. It was a student nurse who admitted her, and nobody thought a thing about preserving any evidence. It was scrubbed away, down the plug hole like Partick Thistle's chances of avoiding relegation.'

I drove in silence. My mouth was dry, and my heart tripped along in my chest. In my four weeks on the job, this was by far the most exciting thing that had happened. Perhaps too exciting. Everything that Joe had said seemed to contradict what I had learned in training, but I wanted to be a part of it, just so I could see what was going to happen.

‘What if. . . what if the girl is lying?' I said. Joe looked at me. ‘I mean, I believe you and everything, but it sounds like we don't really have probable cause to arrest them.'

‘That's why I told you it was a social call.'

‘But what if she's. . . I don't know. . . like an ex girlfriend. Suppose she just made everything up to screw them over?'

‘I saw this lassie. She didn't make up the two black eyes, or the broken wrist.' He shifted in his seat. ‘Look, son, I understand if you don't want to be a part of this. You're new to the force, and they teach you to do things a certain way. If that's the case, just drop me off and head back to the station. but there's a few things you have to understand. Imagine you're rolling a dice. What are your chances of rolling a six?'

‘One in six?'

‘Clever lad. Now, what are your chances of rolling another six right after?'

‘One in. . . thirty six. Something like that.'

‘Right. And another six after that?'

‘One in. . .' Mental arithmetic wasn't my strong point. ‘One hundred and eighty-two?'

‘In the ballpark. Now, my point is this. For our first six, we have two violent young men with antisocial tendencies. Our next six, they live directly in the area that these crimes occurred. All the victims report that their attackers were abnormally tall – that's another six. We have three separate bus drivers, all who swear blind that our boys were on the bus every single time. They remember them, you know, the drivers. Say that they're the kind of lads that always sit up at the back of the top deck so that they can have a smoke and cause trouble. So that's another three sixes right there. And for our final roll of the dice, we have our victim actually recognising one of her attackers. Now, lets do the math. That's six by the power of seven... works out to something like one hundred and fifty thousand to one that it's not them.

And those, Cameron, are betting odds.'

I said nothing. I was surprised that he knew my name.

‘Now, the thing is that there will always be some scumbag lawyer that will be able to claim that all I have is circumstantial evidence, and they would be right. And because they're both still young, even if we got a conviction, we'd be lucky to get more than a couple of months in a young offenders unit. But I think that everybody could agree that both Jerry and Derek are headed down a slippery slope, and perhaps by intervening now, we might be able to prevent not just further attacks on members of the general public, but possibly even prevent these two young mean wasting what might turn out to be relatively productive lives.

‘I'm not going to lie to you; things could get a little rough. But it's up to you to decide what kind of cop you want to be. Whether you want to be the rule follower, or the one that does what's right.'

Put like that, it didn't take me long to decide. ‘I'm in.'

4.2.

After Joe's description of the McConnells, I expected a tenement flat with wet rot and used needles on the stairwell, a couch mouldering on the street outside. Instead, they lived in a smart detached house in a new estate. But it wasn't a complete contradiction. Compared to those of neighbouring properties, the garden was unkempt, the grass long, the weeds rampant. Joe nodded as we pulled to a halt outside. ‘Mummy inherited a nice wee sum and decided to invest in some property. Guess she's used to having the council do all the maintenance.'

‘Where is mummy, do you think?'

‘She's got a job in a bar. Long hours. Uses it as an excuse every time the boys get into trouble. Daddy's been gone for years. He saw which direction the boys were heading and moved onwards and upwards.'

Joe stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, and then, remembering he was in a pool car, emptied the ashtray out of the window. ‘Come on.

Let's go pay our respects.'

Walking up the path, he spoke softly. ‘All I want from you is to stand in the corner and look pretty. I spoke to some of the officers that have interviewed them. Gerry's bad enough, but Derek's supposed to be a fucking headcase. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. I don't think they'll try anything, but with idiots like these, you never can tell.'

It took forty seconds of persistent knocking before the door was answered. A stick insect with a towel wrapped around his waist and a can of lager in his hand said, ‘I wis takin' a bath.'

There was a livid scratch running down his left cheek.

‘Gerry, is it?' Joe waved his badge as he pushed past and into the house. ‘Where's Derek?'

There was a frown as Gerry registered the badge. ‘What do you want? We haven't done nothing.'

‘Just a wee chat. Where's your brother?'

‘Listening to music with headphones on. That's how I had to get out the fucking bath.'

‘Where? Living room? Kitchen? Shed at the bottom of the garden?'

Gerry pointed sullenly. ‘Living room.'

‘After you.'

‘It's through there. I'll just go and put some clothes on.'

The kid made to go back up the stairs, but Joe put a hand on his arm. ‘That won't be necessary. We're not going to be long.'

Gerry grumbled as he led us into the living room. The place was a tip, with old newspapers and half eaten plates of food littering the floor. Derek was sitting on a settee eating crisps, an oversized pair of headphones balanced on his head. He whipped them off as we entered the room and I caught a quick burble of techno before he hit the off switch. ‘Who the fuck are you?'

Joe waved his badge for the second time, directing Jerry to the opposite end of the settee. The kid sat down, the towel riding up and falling open. Not a pretty sight, but at least there wasn't much to look at.

They weren't identical, but the facial resemblance was there. Both had high foreheads and monobrows. Joe had said they were my height, but after seeing Jerry standing upright, I put them at a couple of inches taller. They were certainly big enough and ugly enough to scare the shit out of the average person. It didn't worry me. I'd been strong before, but four months of torture up at the police training college at Tulliallan had left me in better physical shape than I had ever been in my life. They were willow trees compared to my oak. If it came to a one on one fight, I'd break them in half.

Joe swiped an empty pizza box off an armchair onto the floor, checking there was nothing unpleasant that could stain the seat of his trousers before sitting down. ‘You know, it wouldn't kill you guys to do a bit of a clean up around here.'

‘Mum's at work.'

‘And wouldn't it be a surprise for her to come home to a nice tidy house?'

The two boys looked at each other and laughed. ‘Fuck that.'

‘I bet she's proud of you.' Joe reached into his pocket. ‘Anyhoo, I didn't come here to chat. I was wondering if you knew this lassie.'

He passed a Polaroid to Gerry, who studied it. I was only three months in the job, but I saw his eyes flick to his brother and back, and understood the significance.

‘No, pal. Never seen her.'

‘What about your brother?'

This time, Derek's face didn't give him away. He gave the picture a cursory glance before shaking his head and passing it back.

‘That's strange. Her name's Louise Brennan. She lives less than two hundred yards away. Walks her dog past your house every single day.'

Derek gestured to the closed blinds. ‘Do I look like I give a fuck what goes on outside?'

‘Fair enough.' Joe passed another picture over her. ‘What about this one?'

This time, both their faces remained clear. They looked at the picture a long time before shaking their heads. Derek said, ‘Looks like somebody hit her with a bus.'

‘Close enough. It's actually the same lassie. The first picture was the