Dead Won't Sleep (14 page)

Jack honked the horn impatiently for the second time as he sat in his driveway waiting for Myra and Alison to come out. He felt as though he was going to explode, and he had to grip the steering wheel to keep a hold of himself. That was happening all the time now. The least little mishap set him off. He was losing it. Big time. The other day at work he almost freaked out in the lift because it wasn’t getting to the third floor quickly enough. How was he ever going to get his life back with all this bearing down on him? In bed at night he lay awake, panic raging through him, sweating and shaking while his wife slept. He couldn’t even begin to respond to her if she touched him, and she had already accused him of having an affair because he showed no interest in her, though she only ever wanted sex if she was in the mood – and that wasn’t very often.

At work, he was biting everyone’s head off, and even when Bill coaxed him to go out for a drink to let off
some steam, he refused. It had been building up slowly over the past six months, but now every day it was getting worse. Only the phone calls from Foxy kept him going. Foxy’s consoling voice, promising him everything would turn out fine. One day at a time, Foxy had told him. But right now, hour by hour was bad enough.

‘Hurry up for fuck’s sake,’ he murmured as the door of his house opened, and Myra came out followed by Alison.

‘Look at the face on him, Alison,’ his wife said as she opened the passenger seat door. ‘Face like fizz at every turn.’

Alison smiled at her father and he tried his best to soften his expression. He loved her more than anything in the world, but if he could have, he would have been a million miles away from his wife years ago. He despised her. He even blamed her for the prostitutes. If she wasn’t such a routine, boring bitch who only wanted sex every Thursday after her aerobics class, maybe things would have been different. It wasn’t that he was kinky, but Myra wouldn’t even discuss doing anything remotely different, far less experiment. She’d never given him a blow-job in his life, and was horrified when he tried to push her head down one night when she’d had a few drinks and was looking frisky. That was five years ago, and he hadn’t tried it again.

Alison was different. She was everything to him. They had a kind of secret affinity with each other, as if Alison
knew the pressure Myra put on him and how unhappy he was. He adored her. She had made him proud the way she had studied at school and made it to university with flying colours. She was going to be a doctor, and Jack felt that would raise him to a different status altogether. A daughter who was a doctor. And him just a boy from the back closes of Maryhill.

Now he was driving her to the station so she could catch the train back to university in Edinburgh after spending the weekend at home. Recently, even she had seen how tetchy he was and had asked him if everything was all right. Fine, he’d told her. He was just working on a difficult inquiry. She was not to worry. And Alison had accepted it.

‘So what’s the plan tonight, Alison?’ Jack tried to sound cheery. ‘Out with your flatmates? Mind, you’ve a lot of studying to do.’ He knew he didn’t need to remind her, but he wanted to. Myra sat beside him, leafing through a magazine, seemingly uninterested in the conversation.

‘Just out for a couple of hours, Dad. There’s a quiz night at the local boozer.’

‘Just be careful. That’s all.’ He smiled in the rear-view mirror and she grinned back.

‘Listen to him,’ his wife piped up. ‘You’d think he sat in playing dominoes every night. Sure, you’re never home. If it’s not that bloody boat with the boys, then it’s some other policeman’s farewell drunken party night. Who are you to lecture?’

Jack looked at her and looked away. He wasn’t going to be drawn into this argument because right now he didn’t know if he could keep his temper. He pushed away the vision in his head of stopping the car and slapping his wife hard. Christ! How he would love to do that.

At the station they all got out of the car, and Jack hauled Alison’s bag from the boot. He watched as she hugged her mum. Myra patted her daughter’s back, but didn’t hold her close. Jack knew that Alison’s biggest hug was always reserved for him.

‘Come on then, my darlin’.’ He swept her up and held her tight. ‘Jesus, Alison.’ He felt his chest tight with sudden emotion. ‘I miss you when you’re through there. I really do.’ He hugged her hard and buried his head in her hair.

‘I know, Dad.’ She squeezed him. ‘I miss you too, but before you know it I’ll be running the show at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow.’ She released herself from the hug and looked into his face.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Dad?’ Alison scanned his face. ‘You look done in. Really tired.’

‘Just work, pet.’ Jack sniffed. He felt like crying. If she only knew the kind of man her daddy really was she’d be repelled. It would destroy her.

‘I’m fine, Alison.’ Jack held her hand. ‘Just you get back to uni now, and work hard. See you next weekend.’ He let her go and she walked away, turning to wave before disappearing into the crowd.

*   *   *

Several hours later, Jack sat in his car in the Cathkin Braes, staring into the middle distance. The sun had never really broken through the cloud, and now the darkness was coming down, spreading across the landscape. He had driven here because it was one of the spots that had always been so much a part of his life, and it was where he felt he could see things more clearly. Sometimes he would just come here and sit, and in the silence he could see images of his entire life. He knew who he was when he sat here. And even the view was great. You could look down and see the whole of Glasgow, from the East End right up to Partick in the distance. Over a million lives were being led out there. Over a million stories, every one different. None like his.

He remembered coming out here with Myra when they were young and in love. It was here they had their first sexual encounter, in the back of his car. Now he smiled at the thought of it. How different things had become between them in recent years. She was so buttoned up, so grasping, and so demanding – she wanted the best of everything in the house. Jack couldn’t keep up with her. Every time he got a promotion, she’d spent his salary increase almost before it went into the bank. And she never questioned where any extra money came from if he handed her a few quid to go and buy herself a new outfit or something for the house. Every week, his cut of the pay-off from the sauna boss went into her pocket. He hated her now.

Jack remembered the good old days with Foxy and Bill, when they were coppers on the beat. How they used to bring young neds up here and give them a good kicking. They couldn’t stand the way these punks used to thumb their noses at them while they robbed and slashed their way through the housing schemes. It was here, too, that they had made deals down the years with the Big Man. He would pay them off in wads of twenty-and fifty-pound notes for work they had done, for blind eyes that had been turned. Then there was the gun amnesty that made Strathclyde Police the envy of the rest of Britain. Gangsters had agreed to hand in their guns. Every other day, more shotguns and pistols were discovered after tip-offs to the cops. Mostly it was to Foxy and Bill, and it brought them huge accolades in the force and beyond. Nobody but them and Jack knew it was all organised with the Big Man. They scratched his back and he scratched theirs.

But if he was really honest with himself, it had all got out of hand in the last two or three years. Since Foxy had been made head of the CID, the whole game had got out of control.

Hookers on the boat and the odd bit of cocaine had been fine. They’d used whores all their lives and it was one of the perks of the job, but they’d been doing it more and more recently. Then, after the girl had died on the boat, something died inside him. It wasn’t just that she died, it was the fact that they threw her over
the side. He kept thinking of Alison and how she was at that age. His conscience had never bothered him all the time he was using the prostitutes, but dumping a wee lassie into the sea like that haunted him. He had actually considered going to Special Branch and spilling the beans, but he knew he couldn’t do that, they wouldn’t believe him. And the way he had been behaving this past few months, they would have said he was ready for the laughing academy. He might even have got locked up. Then when the bird Mags was killed, Jack knew there was no way out.

But now, for the first time in a very long while, he felt clear in his mind. He was glad he’d written the letter to Alison. He knew she would be devastated that the father she knew and loved was very different from the one he had just written about. In time, he hoped she would understand. But he had to confess, and to pray for her forgiveness. It had been a very long letter, eight pages, confessing what Foxy, Bill and he had done over the years. Everything about the pay-offs from Big Jake and the sauna boss; the prostitutes, the boat, the drugs; the fit-ups, naming names of some of the men they had framed on murders and armed robberies. He spared her the fact that he too went with prostitutes. He couldn’t bear to write that, he was too much of a coward. But he knew she would assume he must have done. He wrote details of the night with Tracy, from the moment he picked her up in Glasgow until they threw her into the
water. He confessed it was Big Jake who was behind Mags Gillick’s murder. He said how he couldn’t go on any longer with all this on his conscience. He couldn’t live with the guilt, so he would die with it. This was about telling the truth.

When he stuck the letter in the post box he hoped she would do something with it. He included a photograph he’d taken of Big Jake on Fox’s boat. It was time for retribution, for punishment for the lives they had led. They didn’t deserve to get away with it, and he was ready to take his punishment. He would burn in hell. He sat back and switched on the engine of his car. He adjusted the hosepipe he had attached from the exhaust pipe, and pushed his seat back so that he was in a relaxed position.

It didn’t take long. He barely noticed it happening. He felt sleepy. With his eyes half shut he looked out once more, and saw the whole of Glasgow begin to flicker under the street lamps. Night was coming. It was over. He was glad.

The following morning, as Rosie plonked herself down in her seat at the
Post
, the phone rang. She recognised Don’s voice.

‘Jack Prentice is dead. He’s done himself in. Found in his car in the Cathkin Braes. Hosepipe.’

Rosie didn’t answer, and the phone clicked off.

‘The shit has hit the fan,’ Rosie said, going into McGuire’s office and closing the door.

He looked up from his desk, then sat back, motioning with his hand for her to sit down. ‘Talk to me.’

Rosie’s insides were churning. She took a deep breath and sat down on the sofa to compose herself.

‘Jack Prentice has killed himself,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a call. And I’ve checked it out through another source. Hosepipe job. Up in Cathkin Braes.’

‘Fuck me!’ McGuire said. ‘Not very imaginative. Typical plod.’ He spread his hands out as though waiting for Rosie to toss him an idea. ‘What next? Did he leave a note?’

‘Christ knows. Too early for that. It just happened last night, late.’

Rosie’s head had been spinning since the phone call from Don a few minutes ago. She had been trying to have a plan of action before going in to see McGuire,
but she couldn’t get her head around it. Prentice was dead. Mags was dead. It was clearer than ever now that Mags was telling the truth, and that Gavin Fox and the other two were in it up to their necks. Not that she had ever been in any doubt. But since she’d visited the children’s home and listened to the disturbing story Trina had told her, she had been pre-occupied by that all weekend. That was an even bigger story, one that would rock the country, and when the time came she would bust her gut to expose these people.

She told McGuire there would no doubt be an attempt by the cops to play down Prentice’s suicide, and that Reynolds would be better handling the story. It would be straightforward. They would say that Prentice had been suffering from depression for some time, and would give Reynolds enough evidence to back that up. There wasn’t a snowball in hell’s chance of anyone connecting his death to the other stuff.

‘I think we should just tell the story,’ Rosie said. ‘We can simply say that it comes at a time when police are probing the deaths of two prostitutes in the past week, and one unsolved hooker murder last year. It doesn’t suggest any involvement and it’s a valid enough thing to say. But it’ll rattle Fox’s cage, and anything we can do to noise him up is good.’

‘Yeah.’ McGuire was on his feet, already visualising the story in the paper. ‘And make sure we’ve got a picture of Prentice for tomorrow’s paper. You never know. There
must be a few hookers who know him. One of them might pop up and back the Mags story.’ He grinned. ‘Not that half a dozen junkie hookers telling the same story would stop the lawyers twitching, but it would help.’

‘Sure,’ Rosie said. ‘Reynolds will organise a picture. Might even get Prentice in his Freemason apron.’

‘Now that would be just dandy,’ McGuire laughed, and went back behind his desk. He gave Rosie a look that said it was time to go, but she decided that now was as good a time as any to tell him what Trina had told her.

‘Listen, Mick,’ she said. ‘There’s been another development that I think you should know about. It’s really over-the-top stuff, but if it’s true, then Christ knows how we’ll handle it.’

McGuire looked at his watch.

‘I’ve got a meeting shortly, before conference.’

‘This is important, Mick,’ Rosie insisted.

He leaned forward, his black eyebrows knitted in anticipation. ‘Go on then, Gilmour. Let’s hear it.’

She began by telling him what Mags had said about the children’s home and kids being used. Then she told him about Gemma turning up on her doorstep, and watched his angry frown as he heard how she and TJ had her back to the home.

‘Who the fuck’s TJ?’

‘A friend. Just a friend.’ She looked away from McGuire’s piercing eyes. ‘He’s fine though, don’t worry. I can trust him.’