Father Confessor (J McNee series) (12 page)

Which was why I ignored it.

Burns said, “We’ve been here before, but I hope you’ll realise the opportunity I’m offering you. I was hoping to retain your services.”

“You’re right,” I said. “We’ve already had this discussion.”

“And even you can’t be so bloody pig-headed to deny that we could have avoided a lot of trouble by working together in the past.”

“Is this how you got Ernie? Sweet talk? Made him doubt himself? The choices he’d made?”

“I won’t deny the man was conflicted,” Burns said. “But the old bugger was never compromised. Not by me. Not like you think. I’ve told you before, sometimes you look at things the wrong way.”

I thought about when I saw Ernie at Burns’s house. Just over a year earlier, the image still burned in my memory as though it was only a few hours ago: my mentor standing in this gangster’s back yard dressed in white chinos and holding a glass of wine like it was any other dinner party with any other middle class, middle-aged friend.

The shock was a brick to the back of the head. Worse than any beating I’d taken.

Betrayal is something that doesn’t leave. The scars may not be visible, but they linger, and soon enough you’re the only person aware of them. And you know that they won’t ever leave no matter how much you try to ignore them.

Ernie had betrayed me. Betrayed his job. Betrayed the man I had believed him to be.

Was that his fault? Had I placed too much expectation on him?

I’d always believed Ernie Bright to be the model copper. The absolute ideal. I had held him to high, maybe even impossible standards.

Why? Because he had believed in me? More than that, but it was a good starting place. It was Ernie who’d got me the CID gig in the first place. He’d helped me out of uniform and onto the fast track.

“You’re a natural detective,” he’d told me once. “Too idealistic, aye. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

Had he been trying to tell me something?

Burns brought me out of my memories. “The last few months, Ernie told me he couldn’t take it any more, that he had to maintain a distance. That he was going to come after me hard if I dared step out of line. I think that was because you found out that he was…” Burns paused for a moment. Poured himself another whisky. Didn’t offer me anything this time. As he screwed the lid back on the bottle, he finally seemed to have found the word he was searching for, “… fraternising. It’s the old cliché, McNee. Me and him, under other circumstances, we might have been friends. We’re the same age. We come from the same place. Grew up in the same streets.”

“What made him different to you?”

“Luck.” Burns shrugged. “What makes anyone different from anyone else? Christ, McNee, human beings are the most unpredictable creatures on the planet. Psychologists claim to know so much about what makes us tick but the truth is all they know is shite.”

There was something we could agree on, at least. Some common ground. But still I had to wonder if he was telling me what I wanted to hear, playing some kind of game. My paranoia was on full tilt, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was still groggy after the beating or I was sensing a real deception on the part of this old man.

I said, “Who would want to frame him?”

“For one? That bastard who tried to kill you –”

“We don’t know that –”

“He was trying to kill you.” Burns spoke with a finality on the matter.

I realised that I hadn’t asked what happened to Cal Anderson. The implication was that one of Burns’s boys had saved me.

The question was how?

Burns was a man who believed that old cliché of fighting fire with fire. Sean Connery in
The Untouchables
:
You send one of his men to the hospital, he sends one of yours to the morgue
. And in a strange way, I knew that Burns considered me one of his men.

He’d said it before, that he saw something of himself in me. I’d always thought of the statement as a kind of manipulation, trying to appeal to my ego. But I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t telling the truth. I’m not sure what frightened me more. The idea of his admiration. Or the idea that I deserved it.

“He was trying to kill you,” Burns said. “Because you were close to the truth. You and Detective Inspector Lindsay.” He waited for a second, as though expecting me to fill the silence. I didn’t oblige, so he continued: “Your man Lindsay had three names. All under investigation themselves. All of them beat constables.”

I gave him that one. “And not one of them looking at promotion,” I said.

“And not one of them connected to Bright.”

“Someone wanted him out of the way?”

“There’s that brain,” said Burns. “I always said you were a bright lad.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“It would be easy to let myself get caught up in this. To rise to the bait. Because whoever’s behind this, they’re going to be coming after me. That’s why they made it look like Ernie Bright was guilty. But trust me, I couldn’t have pushed him into dealing or holding or anything like that.

You have to know that men have limits. And Ernie made his clear.”

He sounded paranoid. Desperate. A catch in his voice I’d never heard before. He had always seemed so self-assured and absolutely confident in his own actions.

I figured there was something he wasn’t telling me.

Something he already knew.

Men like Burns never tell anyone the whole truth.

“I’m asking you to do what you do best, McNee. Gather the evidence. Find the man responsible.”

“And then?”

He smiled. Patiently.

I shook my head. “Not interested. Not for you.”

“I have a name.”

I stood up, grabbing at the desk for leverage. My body was still shaking. The codeine had dulled the pain a little, but not enough that I could function as normal. It took a lot of effort to remain on my feet. I could hear a noise like the sea heard through a shell.

I made for the door, each step slow and deliberate.

Burns didn’t move. Didn’t try and stop me. He wasn’t going to strong-arm me. He wanted to prove the point to me. Let me know that he wasn’t just a criminal. He would let me walk. But not without dangling some other bait.

As I put my hand on the doorhandle, he said, “Kevin Wood.”

I turned. “What?”

“Just a name,” he said. “But I can see you’ve made up your mind.”

I nodded. The name sounded familiar, but my head was fogged and all I wanted to do was crawl into a dark space and go to sleep.

I could have stayed. Listened to what he had to say.

Instead I thought, sodit, and opened the door.

Burns said nothing.

Just let me walk.

There was a taxi waiting for me outside. I couldn’t have told you where we were, just an anonymous looking warehouse on the edge of a residential street I’d never seen or at least didn’t recognise in the dark. The driver of the taxi was quiet, seemed to know where I wanted to head. Likely he’d been warned in advance. I checked my phone as we drove, saw a message from Susan.

Another follow-up an hour later. Both asking where I was.

I did the maths on how long I’d been out. Wondered how it must have looked, what Susan was thinking after seeing the way I left the ward back at Ninewells.

Light was beginning to lick the sky as we pulled up outside my building. I offered the driver cash, but he said it was all taken care of.

When I got into the apartment, I found Susan sitting in the living room, the lights off.

She said, “Where were you?” sounding accusatory.

Then she saw the state I was in.

“Jesus, Steed!”

###

I sipped at the coffee. My mouth hurt. There was the taste of blood. Thick. A gag reflex when I realised what the sensation was.

The coffee burned hotter than expected, maybe an exposed nerve somewhere in one of my back teeth. I tried not let it show. More than likely, I failed.

Susan sat across from me. “I thought you were past this.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Crap it’s nothing.” She looked guilty, then, her eyes suddenly breaking contact. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “What, you got upset, so you went looking for a fight?”

I shook my head.

“Steed, I know you. I remember what you were like after…”

“… After Elaine died. You can say it, Susan.” But could she? Elaine’s death was over three years ago, now, and still it came between us. Perhaps because of what happened all those years ago. One moment where Susan and I had reached to each other for comfort, wound up pushing each other further away.

That… mistake… still hung in the air, even though we both knew it was nothing to be ashamed of anymore. Still, both of us pretended it hadn’t happened. Did that say something we couldn’t express?

Being an investigator, much of your job is figuring out other people’s motivations, seeing who they are and figuring why they do what they do. The thing you realise fast is that the most difficult people to figure out are those closest to you.

And yourself?

Forget it.

Susan faltered as she tried to continue speaking. She started to twist the skin on her left index finger as though she were playing with a ring. But she didn’t wear much jewellery and certainly not on that finger. “After Elaine died… Steed, you were a mess. You were out there looking to die. You know that, don’t you?”

The inside of my head felt thick, as though my brain was wrapped in a damp cloth. I put down the coffee, reached up to massage my temples.

Susan said, “I wanted to reach out to you. I didn’t know how. Every time I tried, you were wrapped up in your grief and anger. You let them define you.”

I wanted to stand up. Walk out.

But I didn’t. Because she needed to say this. And I needed to hear it, too.

“Two years ago,” Susan said, “I saw you like this. Your hand busted up. Your face split open. Jesus, someone had tried to shoot you, and you acted almost like you wished they’d succeeded.”

I looked up. “Things are different now.”

“Really?”

“I’m backing off. This is too big for me.”

She said, “I’ve heard that before.” But then she stood up, came over and put her arms around my shoulders, kissed the top of my head. The fleeting pressure of her lips on my scalp made me think of the sweep of a gentle breeze passing across me on a summer afternoon.

###

Later, in bed, Susan lay with her head on my chest. I stroked her hair. Said, “This is going to be a strange question. But did your dad know Kevin Wood?”

The name had been bubbling in my head for a while. Earlier, when Burns had tossed it at me, I had barely registered what he was saying.

Now, later, my mind calm, the pain a low background buzz, I realised why I knew the name.

Kevin Wood.

Deputy Chief Constable Kevin Wood

Second-top cop in Tayside. The man tipped for the top spot when the current boss left.

When she heard his name, Susan gave a little laugh. “I guess… he was… Dad’s… I guess you’d say Wood was his nemesis.” She laughed the word off, as though it was ridiculous. As though in real life, no-one would dare use that word. Certainly, it had a melodramatic quality I was sure she didn’t intend.

“There was bad blood?”

“He came up at the same time as Dad. Look, you know how you are with George Lindsay? Guess that was my dad and Kevin Wood. Serious hatred there. But with Wood, Christ he was a sleazeball. I met him a few times. Gave me the shivers just to shake his hand, you know?” She sat up, leaned on one elbow to look down at me.

I said, “I never met him. But from what I heard he was the Marmite of police officers.”

“Don’t know about Marmite. Even Lindsay used to call him…” She hesitated. Directly quoting her superior wasn’t something she did with ease. Susan had no problems with swearing, but had never felt comfortable using the words herself. Except in those rare moments when her guard was down, when the pressure was on. Took a burst of willpower for her to get it out: “A power-grabbing cuntybaws.”

“Makes what he calls me sound complimentary.”

“Where’d you hear his name? I mean, Wood…”

“It’s nothing.”

She nodded. Tried to look relaxed, like everything was normal. But her body was tense, the doubt running through her in waves.

She was afraid. I didn’t know if it was for me.

“Things are different,” she said. “Things have changed.”

“Yes,” I said. “They have.”

###

I woke early evening. Body clock screwed.

Susan was gone.

No note.

I went through to the shower, blasted the heat high and stood under water hot enough to scald. Twice I had to lean against the tiles to stop from toppling over. All I’d been through, I was nearly knocked out by a jet of warm water.

When I was done, I looked at myself in the mirror.

The man who stared back looked tired.

Like he couldn’t take the pace any more.

How long could you keep punishing yourself before you dropped?

There was no-one in the ward from the force. They’d done their bit. Probably knew that Lindsay would get pissed off if they hung about too long, would want them back at the job.

A nurse allowed me into the small room where Lindsay was hooked up to a machine that controlled his breathing. Induced coma.

Jesus.

I pulled up a chair. “Christ, so it’s come to this, has it? You’re my confidant. And only because you’re in a coma and can’t talk back? So consider this reason enough to get better. Because if you don’t come round, I’ll keep coming back to whine at you. Like the bawbag you keep saying I am.”

There was no response, of course.

I kept talking: “I promised Susan I’d leave this alone. Same promise I make all the time. Aye, the same one I keep breaking. But I don’t know if she understands why I can’t walk away. Or maybe she does. Either way, I think she just wants to lay her dad to rest without dragging up any more ugliness. It would be easier. To brush all of this under the carpet.”

I turned back to look at Lindsay. His chest moved up and down. The machine gurgled.